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CHRISTIAN NURTURE. 


Bt HORACE BTJSHNELL. 

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“ And all thy children shall 
the peace of thy children.” 


be taught of the Lord ; and great shall he 
Isaiah,, liit. 13. 


NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET, 


1863. 




-fjf lAl 5 " 

' 31 

|2C,3 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the tear 1860, 

By CHARLES SCRIBNER, 

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for 
the Southern District of New York. 





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*. M. NOBB9, •TEREOTYfER, HARTFORD, CO If If* 





CONTENTS. 


PART I. —THE DOCTRINE. 

L—What Christian nurture is,. 9 

II.—What Christian nurture is,. S3 

III. —The ostrich nurture,. 65 

IV. —The organic unity of the family,. 90 

V.—Infant baptism, how developed,... 123 

VI.—Apostolic authority of infant baptism,. 145 

VII.—Church membership of children,. 162 

TUI. —The out-populating power of the Christian stock,. 195 


PART II. —THE MODE. 

I.—When and where the nurture begins,. 227 

II.—Parental qualifications,. 262 

III. —Physical nurture, to be a means of grace,. 271 

IV. —The treatment that discourages piety,. 295 

V.—Family government,. 314 

VI.—Plays and pastimes, holidays and Sundays,.338 

VII.—The Christian teaching of children,. 366 

VIII.—Family prayers,. 385 









































, 

1 













' 

■ •- • r 














PREFACE. 


The subject of this volume is one of the highest) in the 
order of consequence, both as respects the welfare of relig¬ 
ion and of human society. No apology therefore is needed, 
for the giving to the public of any thing concerning it, which 
is honestly meant, and thoughtfully prepared. 

I should have preferred, on some accounts, to write a 
proper treatise on the subject—which this volume is not. 
The shape it has taken will be sufficiently explained, by the 
facts and considerations, that have been determining causes, 
in the process of its construction. Thirteen years ago I was 
drawn, by solicitation from others, into the publication of two 
discourses, the first two of this volume, under the title 
Christian Nurture. Afterwards, these were republished 
with another, the fourth of the present volume, and with other 
articles variously related, under the same title. These publi 
cations have been out of print for some years; for I have 
preferred the discontinuance of publication, till I might be 
able to present the subject in a more adequate and complete 
manner. The present volume is the result. 

In preparing it, I could not easily consent to lay aside, or 
pass into oblivion, the two discourses above referred to; for, 
under the fortune that befel them, they had become a little 
historical. In this fuller treatment of the subject therefore, I 
have allowed them to stand, requiring the additions made, to 



vi 


PREFACE. 


take their shape or type. Thirteen new essays, in the form 
of discourses, though never used as such, hut written simply 
for the discussion’s sake, are thus added; and the volume, 
which virtually covers the ground of a treatise, takes the form 
of successive topical discussions, or essays, on so many themes 
included in the general subject. 

As was natural, in this kind of treatment, I have not been 
careful, always, to remember in one precisely what I have 
said in another, and so it happens that they sometimes over¬ 
lap a little; the same kind of liberty being taken that is com¬ 
monly had in sermons, where there is no delicacy felt, under 
any particular theme, in saying what may be necessary to the 
fullest impression of it, even if something like it has been 
necessary to the impression of some other. But this, which, 
taking the volume as a treatise, might be a just subject of 
criticism, may even be an advantage, as respects the conven¬ 
ience of use, and the popular and practical impressions to b<? 
made by it. 

I need offer no apology for retaining the old title, in a vol 
ume that is virtually new; or for reasserting, with more 
emphasis and deliberation, after an interval of years, what the 
years have only established and made firm in my Christian 
convictions. h. b. 



y 






PART I-THE DOCTRINE. 






































































































































































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I. 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

“Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”— Ephe- 
ttam, vi. 4. 

There is then some kind of nurture which is of the 
Lord, deriving a quality and a power from Him, and 
communicatiug the same. Being instituted by Him, it 
will of necessity have a method and a character peculiar 
to itself, or rather to Him. It will be the Lord’s way 
of education, having aims appropriate to Him, and, if 
realized in its full intent, terminating in results impos¬ 
sible to be reached by any merely human method. 

What then is the true idea of Christian or divine nur¬ 
ture, as distinguished from that which is not Christian? 
What is its aim? What its method of working? 
What its powers and instruments? What its contem¬ 
plated results ? Few questions have greater moment; 
and it is one of the pleasant signs of the times, that the 
subject involved is beginning to attract new interest, 
and excite a spirit of inquiry which heretofore has not 
prevailed in our churches. 

In ordinary cases, the better and more instruct! 
way of handling this subject, would be to go directly 
into the practical methods of parental discipline, anu 
show by what modes of government and instruction we 


10 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


may hope to realize the best results. But unhappily 
the public mind is preoccupied extensively by a view 
of the whole subject, which I must regard as a theoret 
ical mistake, and one which will involve, as long as it 
continues, practical results systematically injurious. 
This mistaken view it is necessary, if possible, to 
remove. And accordingly what I have to say will 
take the form of an argument on the question thus put 
in issue; though I design to gather round the subject, as 
I proceed, as much of practical instruction as the mode 
of the argument will suffer. Assuming then the ques¬ 
tion above stated, What is the true idea of Christian 
education?—I answer in the following proposition, 
which it will be the aim of my argument to establish, 
viz: 

That the child is to grow up a Christian , and never 
Jcnow himself as being otherwise. 

In other words, the aim, effort, and expectation should 
be, not, as is commonly assumed, that the child is to 
grow up in sin, to be converted after he comes to a 
mature age; but that he is to open on the world as one 
that is spiritually renewed, not remembering the time 
when he went through a technical experience, but 
seeming rather to have loved what is good from his 
earliest years. I do not affirm that every child may, in 
fact and without exception, be so trained that he cer¬ 
tainly will grow up a Christian. The qualifications it 
may be necessary to add will be given in another place, 
where they can be stated more intelligibly. 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


11 


This doctrine is not a novelty, now rashly and for the 
first time propounded, as some of yon may be tempted 
to suppose. I shall show you, before I have done with 
the argument, that it is as old as the Christian church, 
and prevails extensively at the present day in other 
parts of the world. Neither let your own experience 
raise a prejudice against it. If you have endeavored to 
realize the very truth I here affirm, but find that your 
children do not exhibit the character you have looked 
for; if they seem to' be intractable to religious influ¬ 
ences, and sometimes to display an apparent aversion to 
the very subject of religion itself, you are not of course 
to conclude that the doctrine I here maintain is untrue 
or impracticable. You may be unreasonable in your 
expectations of your children. 

Possibly, there may be seeds of holy principle in 
them, which you do not discover. A child acts out 
his present feelings, the feelings of the moment, without 
qualification or disguise. And how, many times, would 
all you appear, if you were to do the same ? Will you 
expect of them to be better, and more constant and 
consistent, than yourselves; or will you rather expect 
them, to be children, human children still, living a 
mixed life, trying out the good and evil of the world, 
and preparing, as older Christians do, when they have 
taken a lesson of sorrow and emptiness, to turn again 
to the true good ? 

Perhaps they will go through a rough mental strug¬ 
gle, at some future day, and seem, to others and to 
themselves, there to have entered on a Christian life. 


12 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


And yet it may be true that there was still some root 
of right principle established in their childhood, which 
is here only quickened and developed, as when Chris¬ 
tians of a mature age are revived in their piety, after a 
period of spiritual lethargy; for it is conceivable that 
regenerate character may exist, long before it is fully 
and formally developed. 

But suppose there is really no trace or seed of holy 
principle in your children, has there been no fault of 
piety and constancy in your church ? no want of Chris¬ 
tian sensibility and love to God ? no carnal spirit visi¬ 
ble to them and to all, and imparting its noxious and 
poisonous quality to the Christian atmosphere in which 
they have had their nurture ? For it is not for you 
alone to realize all that is included in the idea of Chris¬ 
tian education. It belongs to the church of God, 
according to the degree of its social power over you 
and in you and around your children, to bear a part of 
the responsibility with you. 

Then, again, have you nothing to blame in your¬ 
selves ? no lack of faithfulness ? no indiscretion of man¬ 
ner or of temper ? no mistake of duty, which, with a 
better and more cultivated piety, you would have been 
able to avoid? Have you been so nearly even with 
your privilege and duty, that you can find no relief but 
to lay some charge upon God, or comfort yourselves in 
the conviction that he has appointed the failure you de¬ 
plore? When God marks out a plan of education, or 
sets up an aim to direct its efforts, you will see, at once, 
that he could not base it on a want of piety in you, or 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 13 

on any imperfections that flow from a want of piety. 
It must be a plan measured by Himself and the fullness 
of his own gracious intentions. 

Besides, you must not assume that we, in this age, 
are the best Christians that have ever lived, or most 
likely to produce all the fruits of piety. An assumption 
so pleasing to our vanity is more easily made than veri¬ 
fied, but vanity is the weakest as it is the cheapest of all 
arguments. We have some good points, in which we 
compare favorably with other Christians, and Christians 
of other times, but our style of piety is sadly deficient, 
in many respects, and that to such a degree that we have 
little cause for self-congratulation. With all our activ¬ 
ity and boldness of movement, there is a certain hard¬ 
ness and rudeness, a want of sensibility to things that 
do not lie in action, which can not be too much de¬ 
plored, or too soon rectified. We hold a piety of con¬ 
quest rather than of love. A kind of public piety, that 
is strenuous and fiery on great occasions, but wants the 
beauty of holiness, wants constancy, singleness of aim, 
loveliness, purity, richness, blamelessness, and—if I may 
add another term not so immediately religious, but one 
that carries, by association, a thousand religious quali¬ 
ties—wants domesticity of character; wants them, I 
mean, not as compared with the perfect standard of 
Christ, but as compared with other examples of piety 
that have been given in former times, and others that 
are given now. 

For some reason, we do not make a Christian atmos¬ 
phere about us—do not produce the conviction that we 

2 


14 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

are living unto God. There is a marvelous want of 
savor in our piety. It is a flower of autumn, colored 
as highly as it need be to the eye, but destitute of fra¬ 
grance. It is too much to hope that, with such an in¬ 
strument, we can fulfill the true idea of Christian 
education. Any such hope were even presumptuous. 
At the same time, there is no so ready way of removing 
the deficiencies just described, as to recall our churches 
to their duties in domestic life; those humble, daily, 
hourly duties, where the spirit we breathe shall be a 
perpetual element of power and love, bathing the life 
of childhood. 

Thus much it was necessary to say, for the removal 
of prejudices that are likely to rise up in your minds, 
and make you inaccessible to the arguments I may 
offer. Let all such prejudices be removed, or, if this be 
too much, let them, at least, be suspended till you have 
heard what I have to advance; for it can not be desired 
of you to believe any thing more than what is shown 
you by adequate proofs. Which also it is right to ask 
that you will receive, in a spirit of conviction, such as 
becomes our wretched and low attainments, and with a 
willingness to let God be exalted, though at the expense 
of some abasement in ourselves. In pursuing the argu¬ 
ment, I shall— 

I. Collect some considerations which occur to 
us, viewing the subject on the human side, and 
then— 

II. Show how far and by what methods God has jus¬ 
tified, on his part, the doctrine we maintain. 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 15 

There is then, as the subject appears to us— 

1. No absurdity in supposing that children are to 
grow up in Christ. On the other hand, if there is no 
absurdity, there is a very clear moral incongruity in 
setting up a contrary supposition, to be the aim of a 
system of Christian education. There could not be a 
worse or more baleful implication given to a child, than 
that he is to reject God and all holy principle, till he 
has come to a mature age. What authority have you 
from the Scriptures to tell your child, or, by any sign, 
to show him that you do not expect him truly to love 
and obey God, till after he has spent whole years in 
hatred and wrong ? What authority to make him feel 
that he is the most unprivileged of all human beings, 
capable of sin, but incapable of repentance; old enough 
to resist all good, but too young to receive any good 
whatever ? It is reasonable to suppose that you have 
some express authority for a lesson so manifestly cruel 
and hurtful, else you would shudder to give it. I ask 
you for the chapter and verse, out of which it is derived. 
Meantime, wherein would it be less incongruous for you 
to teach your child that he is to lie and steal, and go 
the whole roynd of the vices, and then, after he comes 
to mature age, reform his conduct by the rules of virtue? 
Perhaps you do not give your child to expect that he 
is to grow up in sin ; you only expect that he will your¬ 
self. That is scarcely better: for that which is your 
expectation, will assuredly be his; and what is more, 
any attempt to maintain a discipline at war with your 
own secret expectations, will only make a hollow and 


16 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


worthless figment of that which should be an open, 
earnest reality. You will never practically aim at what 
you practically despair of, and if you do not practically 
aim to unite your child to God, you will aim at some¬ 
thing less ; that is, something unchristian, wrong, sinful. 

But my child is a sinner, you will say; and how can 
I expect him to begin a right life, until God gives him 
a new heart ? This is the common way of speaking, 
and I state the objection in its own phraseology, that it 
may recognize itself. Who then has told you that a 
child can not have the new heart of which you speak ? 
Whence do you learn that if you live the life of Christ, 
before him and with him, the law of the Spirit of Life 
may not be such as to include and quicken him also ? 
And why should it be thought incredible that there 
should be some really good principle awakened in the 
mind of a child? For this is all that is implied in a 
Christian state. The Christian is one who has simply 
begun to love what is good for its own sake, and why 
should it be thought impossible for a child to have this 
love begotten in him ? Take any scheme of depravity 
you please, there is yet nothing in it to forbid the pos¬ 
sibility that a child should be led, in his fi,rst moral act, 
to cleave unto what is good and right, any more than in 
the first of his twentieth year. He is, in that case, only 
a child converted to good, leading a mixed life as all 
Christians do. The good in him goes into combat with 
the evil, and holds a qualified sovereignty. And why 
may not this internal conflict of goodness cover the 
whole life from its dawn, as well as any part of it ? 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 17 

And what more appropriate to the doctrine of spiritual 
influence itself, than to believe that as the Spirit of Je¬ 
hovah fills all the worlds of matter, and holds a presence 
of power and government in all objects, so all human 
souls, the infantile as well as the adult, have a nurture 
of the Spirit appropriate to their age and their wants ? 
What opinion is more essentially monstrous, in fact, 
than that which regards the Holy Spirit as having no 
agency in the immature souls of children who are grow¬ 
ing up, helpless and unconscious, into the perils of 
time ? 

2. It is to be expected that Christian education will 
radically differ from that which is not Christian. Now, 
it is the very character and mark of all unchristian edu¬ 
cation, that it brings up the child for future conversion. 
No effort is made, save to form a habit of outward vir¬ 
tue, and, if God please to convert the family to some¬ 
thing higher and better, after they come to the age of 
maturity, it is well. Is then Christian education, or the 
nurture of the Lord, no way different from this ? Or is 
it rather to be supposed that it will have a higher aim 
and a more sacred character ? 

And, since it is the distinction of Christian parents, 
that they are themselves in the nurture of the Lord, since 
Christ and the Divine Love, communicated through 
him, are become the food of their life, what, will they so 
naturally seek as to have their children partakers with 
them, heirs together with them, in the grace of life ? I 
am well aware of the common impression that Christian 
education is sufficiently distinguished by the endeavor 
2 * 


18 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


of Christian parents to teach their children the lessons 
of Scripture history, and the doctrines or dogmas of 
Scripture theology. But if they are given to under¬ 
stand, at the same time, that these lessons can be 
expected to produce no fruit till they are come to a ma¬ 
ture age—that they are to grow up still in the same 
character as other children do, who have no such in¬ 
struction—what is this but to enforce the practical 
rejection of all the lessons taught them? And which, 
in truth, is better for them, to grow up in sin under 
Scripture light, with a heart hardened by so many re¬ 
ligious lessons; or to grow up in sin, unvexed and 
unannoyed by the wearisome drill of lectures that only 
discourage all practical benefit ? "Which is better, to be 
piously brought up in sin, or to be allowed quietly to 
vegetate in it ? 

These are questions that I know not how to decide; 
but the doubt in which they leave us will at least suffice 
to show that Christian education has, in this view, no 
such eminent advantages over that which is unchristian, 
as to raise any broad and dignified distinction between 
them. We certainly know that much of what is called 
Christian nurture, only serves to make the subject of 
religion odious, and that, as nearly as we can discover, 
in exact proportion to the amount of religious teaching 
received. And no small share of the difficulty to be 
overcome afterwards, in the struggle of conversion, is 
created in just this way. 

On the other hand, you will hear, for example, of 
cases like the following: A young man, correctly but 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 19 

not religiously brought up, light and gay in his man¬ 
ners, and thoughtless hitherto in regard to any thing of 
a serious nature, happens accidentally one Sunday, 
while his friends are gone to ride, to take down a book 
on the evidences of Christianity. His eye, floating over 
one of the pages, becomes fixed, and he is surprised to 
find his feelings flowing out strangely into its holy 
truths. He is conscious of no struggle of hostility, but 
a new joy dawns in his being. Henceforth, to the end 
of a long and useful life, he is a Christian man. The 
love into which he was surprised continues to flow, and 
he is remarkable, in the churches, all his life long, as 
one of the most beautiful, healthful, and dignified ex¬ 
amples of Christian piety. How, a very little misedu- 
cation, called Christian, discouraging the piety it teaches, 
and making enmity itself a necessary ingredient in the 
struggle of conversion, conversion no reality without a 
struggle, might have sufficed to close the mind of this 
man against every thought of religion to the end of 
life. 

Such facts (for the case above given is a fact and not 
a fancy) compel us to suspect'the value of much that is 
called Christian education. They suggest the possi¬ 
bility also that Christian piety should begin in other 
and milder forms of exercise, than those which com¬ 
monly distinguish the conversion of adults; that Christ 
himself, by that renewing Spirit who can sanctify from 
the womb, should be practically infused into the child¬ 
ish mind; in other words, that the house, having a 
domestic Spirit of grace dwelling in it, should become 


20 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


the church of childhood, the table and hearth a holy 
rite, and life an element of saving power. Something 
is wanted that is better than teaching, something that 
transcends mere effort and will-work—the loveliness of 
a good life, the repose of faith, the confidence of right¬ 
eous expectation, the sacred and cheerful liberty of the 
Spirit—all glowing about the young soul, as a warm 
and genial nurture, and forming in it, by methods that 
are silent and imperceptible, a spirit of duty and relig 
ious obedience to God. This only is Christian nurture, 
the nurture of the Lord. 

3. It is a fact that all Christian parents would like to 
see their children grow up in piety; and the better 
Christians they are, the more earnestly they desire it; 
and, the more lovely and constant the Christian spirit 
they manifest, the more likely it is, in general, that their 
children will early display the Christian character. 
This is current opinion. But why should a Christian 
parent, the deeper his piety and the more closely he is 
drawn to God, be led to desire, the more earnestly, 
what, in God’s view, is even absurd or impossible? 
And, if it be generally seen that the children of such 
are more likely to become Christians early, what forbids 
the hope that, if they were riper still in their piety, living 
a more single and Christ-like life, and more cultivated 
in their views of family nurture, they might see their 
children grow up always in piety towards God ? Or, if 
they may not always see it as clearly as they desire, 
might they not still be able to implant some holy prin¬ 
ciple, which shall be the seed of a Christian character 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 21 

in their children, though not developed fully and visibly 
till a later period in life ? 

4. Assuming the. corruption of human nature, when 
should we think it wisest to undertake or expect a rem¬ 
edy ? When evil is young and pliant to good, or when 
it is confirmed by years of sinful habit ? And when, in 
fact, is the human heart found to be so ductile to the 
motives of religion, as in the simple, ingenuous age of 
childhood ? How easy is it then, as compared with the 
stubbornness of adult years, to make all wrong seem 
odious, all good lovely and desirable. If not discour¬ 
aged by some ill-temper which bruises all the gentle 
sensibilities, or repelled by some technical view of re¬ 
ligious character which puts it beyond his age, how 
ready is the child to be taken by good, as it were 
beforehand, and yield his ductile nature to the truth 
and Spirit of God, and to a fixed prejudice against all 
that God forbids. 

He can not understand, of course, in the earliest stage 
of childhood, the philosophy of religion as a renovated 
experience, and that is not the form of the first lessons 
he is to receive. He is not to be told that he must 
have a new heart and exercise faith in Christ’s atone¬ 
ment. We are to understand, that a right spirit may 
be virtually exercised in children, when, as yet, it is 
not intellectually received, or as a form of doctrine. 
Thus, if they are put upon an effort to be good, con¬ 
necting the fact that God desires it and will help them 
in the endeavor, that is all which, in a very early age, 
they can receive, and that includes every thing—re- 


22 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

pentance, love, duty, dependence, faith. Nay, the 
operative truth necessary to a new life, may possibly 
be communicated through and from the parent, being 
revealed in his looks, manners, and ways of life, before 
they are of an age to understand the teaching of words; 
for the Christian scheme, the gospel, is really wrapped 
up in the life of every Christian parent, and beams out 
from him as a living epistle, before it escapes from the 
lips, or is taught in words. And the Spirit of truth 
may as well make this living truth effectual, as the 
preaching of the gospel itself. 

Never is it too early for good to be communicated. 
Infancy and childhood are the ages most pliant to good. 
And who can think it necessary that the plastic nature 
of childhood must first be hardened into stone, and 
stiffened into enmity towards God and all duty, before 
it can become a candidate for Christian character! 
There could not be a more unnecessary mistake, and it is 
as unnatural and pernicious, I fear, as it is unnecessary. 

There are many who assume the radical goodness of 
human nature, and the work of Christian education is, 
in their view, only to educate or educe the good that is in 
us. Let no one be disturbed by the suspicion of a coinci¬ 
dence between what I have here said and such a theory. 
The natural pravity of man is plainly asserted in the 
Scriptures, and, if it were not, the familiar laws of phys¬ 
iology would require us to believe, what amounts to the 
■game thing. And if neither Scripture nor physiology 
taught us the doctrine, if the child was born as clear of 
natural prejudice or damage, as Adam before his sin, 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 23 

spiritual education, or, what is the same, probation, that 
which trains a being for a stable, intelligent virtue here¬ 
after, would still involve an experiment of evil, there¬ 
fore a fall and a bondage under the laws of evil; so 
that, view the matter as we will, there is no so unrear 
sonable assumption, none so wide of all just philosophy, 
as that which proposes to form a child to virtue, by 
simply educing or drawing out what is in him. 

The growth of Christian virtue is no vegetable pro¬ 
cess, no mere onward development. It involves a 
struggle with evil, a fall and a rescue. The soul be¬ 
comes established in holy virtue, as a free exercise, only 
as it is passed round the corner of fall and redemption, 
ascending thus unto God through a double experience, 
in which it learns the bitterness of evil and the worth 
of good, fighting its way out of one, and achieving the 
other as a victory. The child, therefore, may as well 
begin life under a law of hereditary damage, as to 
plunge himself into evil by his own experiment, which 
he will as naturally do from the simple impulse of curi¬ 
osity, or the instinct of knowledge, as from any noxious 
quality in his mold derived by descent. For it is not 
sin which he derives from his parents ; at least, not sin 
in any sense which imports blame, but only some preju¬ 
dice to the perfect harmony of this mold, some kind of 
pravity or obliquity which inclines him to evil. These 
suggestions are offered, not as necessary to be received 
in every particular, but simply to show that the scheme 
of education proposed, is not to be identified with 
another, which assumes the radical goodness of human 


24 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


nature, and according to which, if it be true, Christian 
education is insignificant. 

5. It is implied in all our religious philosophy, that 
if a child ever does any thing in a right spirit, ever 
loves any thing because it is good and right, it involves 
the dawn of a new life. This we can not deny or doubt, 
without bringing in question our whole scheme of doc¬ 
trine. Is it then incredible that some really good feeling 
should be called into exercise in a child ? In all the 
discipline of the house, quickened as it should be by 
the Spirit of God, is it true that he can never once be 
brought to submit to parental authority lovingly and 
because it is right ? Must we even hold the absurdity 
of the scripture council—“ Children obey your parents 
in the Lord, for this is right ?” When we speak thus 
of a love for what is right and good, we must of course 
discriminate between the mere excitement of a natural 
sensibility to pleasure in the contemplation of what is 
good (of which the worst minds are more or less ca¬ 
pable,) and a practicable subordination of the soul to its 
power, a practicable embrace of its law. The child 
must not only be touched with some gentle emotions 
toward what is right, but he must love it with a fixed 
love, love it for the sake of its principle, receive it it as 
a vital and formative power. 

Nor is there any age, which offers itself to God’s 
truth and love, and to that Quickening Spirit whence 
all good proceeds, with so much of ductile feeling and 
susceptibilities so tender. The child is under parental 
authority too for the very purpose, it would seem, of hav- 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 25 

in g the otherwise abstract principle of all duty imper¬ 
sonated in his parents, and thus brought home to his 
practical embrace; so that, learning to obey his parents 
in the Lord, because it is right, he may thus receive, 
before he can receive it intellectually, the principle of 
all piety and holy obedience. And when he is brought 
to exercise a spirit of true and loving submission to the 
good law of his parents, what will you see, many times, 
but a look of childish joy, and a happy sweetness of 
manner, and a ready delight in authority, as like to all 
the demonstrations of Christian experience, as any thing 
childish can be to what is mature ? 

6. Children have been so trained as never to remem¬ 
ber the time when they began to be religious. Baxter 
was, at one time, greatly troubled concerning himself, 
because he could recollect no time when there was a 
gracious change in his character. But he discovered, 
at length, that “education is as properly a means 
of grace as preaching,” and thus found the sweeter 
comfort in bis love to God, that he learned to love him 
so early. The European churches, generally, regard 
Christian piety more as a habit of life, formed under 
the training of childhood, and less as a marked spiritual 
change in experience. In Germany, for example, the 
church includes all the people, and it is remarkable 
that, under a scheme so loose, and with so much of per¬ 
nicious error taught in the pulpit, there is yet so much 
of deep religious feeling, so much of lovely and simple 
character, and a savor of Christian piety so generally 
prevalent in the community. So true is this, that the 
3 


28 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


German people are every day spoken of as a people re¬ 
ligious by nature; no other way being observed of ac¬ 
counting for the strong religious bent they manifest. 
Whereas it is due, beyond any reasonable question, to 
the fact that children are placed under a form of treat¬ 
ment which expects them to be religious, and are not 
discouraged by the demand of an experience above 
their years. 

Again, the Moravian Brethren, it is agreed by all, 
give as ripe and graceful an exhibition of piety, as any 
body of Christians living on the earth, and it is the rad¬ 
ical distinction of their system that it rests its power on 
Christian education. They make their churches schools 
of holy nurture to childhood, and expect their children 
to grow up there, as plants in the house of the Lord. 
Accordingly it is affirmed that not one in ten of the 
members of that church, recollects any time when he 
began to be religious. Is it then incredible that what 
has been can be? Would it not be wiser and more 
modest, when facts are against us, to admit that there is 
certainly some bad error, either in our life, or in our 
doctrine, or in both, which it becomes us to amend ? 

Once more, if we narrowly examine the relation of 
parent and child, we shall not fail to discover some¬ 
thing like a law of organic connection, as regards char¬ 
acter, subsisting between them. Such a connection as 
makes it easy to believe, and natural to expect, that the 
faith of the one will be propagated in the other. Per¬ 
haps I should rather say, such a connection as induces 
the conviction that the character of one is actually in- 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 27 

eluded in that of the other, as a seed is formed in the 
capsule; and being there matured, by a nutriment de¬ 
rived from the stem, is gradually separated from it. It 
is a singular fact, that many believe substantially the 
same thing, in regard to evil character, but have no 
thought of any such possibility in regard to good. 
There has been much speculation, of late, as to whether 
a child is born in depravity, or whether the depraved 
character is superinduced afterwards. But, like many 
other great questions, it determines much less than is 
commonly supposed; for, according to the most proper 
view of the subject, a child is really not born till he 
emerges from the infantile state, and never before that 
time can he be said to receive a separate and properly 
individual nature. 

The declarations of Scripture, and the laws of physiol¬ 
ogy, I have already intimated, compel the belief that a 
child’s nature is somehow depravated by descent from 
parents, who are under the corrupting effects of sin. 
But this, taken as a question relating to the mer q punc- 
tum temporis , or precise point of birth, is not a question 
of any so grave import as is generally supposed; for 
the child, after birth, is still within the matrix of the 
parental life, and will be, more or less, for many years. 
And the parental life will be flowing into him all that 
time, just as naturally, and by a law as truly organic, as 
when the sap of the trunk flows into a limb. We must 
not govern our thoughts, in such a matter, by our eyes; 
and because the physical separation has taken place, 
conclude that no organic relation remains. Even the 


28 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


physical being of the child is dependent still for many 
months, in the matter of nutrition, on organic processes 
not in itself. Meantime, the mental being and charac¬ 
ter have scarcely begun to have a proper individual 
life. Will, in connection with conscience, is the basis 
of personality, or individuality, and' these exist as yet 
only in their rudimental type, as when the form of a 
seed is beginning to be unfolded at the root of a flower. 

At first, the child is held as a mere passive lump in 
the arms, and he opens into conscious life under the soul 
of the parent, streaming into his eyes and ears, through 
the manners and tones of the nursery. The kind and 
degree of passivity are gradually changed as life ad¬ 
vances. A little farther on it is observed that a smile 
wakens a smile ; any kind of sentiment or passion, play¬ 
ing in the face of the parent, wakens a responsive senti¬ 
ment or passion. Irritation irritates, a frown withers, 
love expands a look congenial to itself, and why not 
holy love? Next the ear is opened to the understand¬ 
ing of words, but what words the child shall hear, he 
can not choose, and has as little capacity to select the 
sentiments that are poured into his soul. Farther on, 
the parents begin to govern him by appeals to will, ex¬ 
pressed in commands, and whatever their requirement 
may be, he can as little withstand it, as the violet can 
cool the scorching sun, or the tattered leaf can tame the 
hurricane. Next they appoint his school, choose his 
books, regulate his company, decide what form of relig¬ 
ion, and what religious opinions he shall be taught, by 
taking him to a church of their own selection. In all 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


29 


this, they infringe npon no right of the child, they only 
fulfill an office which belongs to them. Their will and 
character are designed to be the matrix of the child’s 
will and character. Meantime, he approaches more and 
more closely, and by a gradual process, to the proper 
rank and responsibility of an individual creature, dur¬ 
ing all which process of separation, he is having their 
exercises and ways translated into him. Then, at last, 
he comes forth to act his part in such color of evil, and 
why not of good, as he has derived from them. 

The tendency of all our modern speculations is to an 
extreme individualism, and we carry our doctrines of 
free will so far as to make little or nothing of organic 
laws; not observing that character may be, to a great 
extent, only the free development of exercises previ¬ 
ously wrought in us, or extended to us, when other 
wills had us within their sphere. All the Baptist theo¬ 
ries of religion are based in this error. They assume, 
as a first truth, that no such thing is possible as an or¬ 
ganic connection of character, an assumption which is 
plainly refuted by what we see with our eyes, and, as I 
shall by and by show, by the declarations of Scripture. 
We have much to say also, in common with the Bap¬ 
tists, about the beginning of moral agency, and we seem 
to fancy that there is some definite moment when a child 
becomes a moral agent, passing out of a condition where 
he is a moral nullity, and where no moral agency 
touches his being. Whereas he is rather to be regarded, 
at the first, as lying within the moral agency of the 
parent, and passing out, by degrees, through a course 
8 * 



30 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


of mixed agency, to a proper independency and self- 
possession. The supposition that he becomes, at some 
certain moment, a complete moral agent, which a mo¬ 
ment before he was not, is clumsy, and has no agree¬ 
ment with observation. The separation is gradual. 
He is never, at any moment after birth, to be regarded 
as perfectly beyond the sphere of good and bad exer¬ 
cises ; for the parent exercises himself in the child, pla}^- 
ing his emotions and sentiments, and working a charac¬ 
ter in him, by virtue of an organic power. 

And this is the very idea of Christian education, that 
it begins with nurture or cultivation. And the inten¬ 
tion is that the Christian life and spirit of the parents, 
which are in and by the Spirit of God, shall flow into 
the mind of the child, to blend with his incipient and 
half-formed exercises; that they shall thus beget their 
own good within him—their thoughts, opinions, faith, 
and love, which are to become a little more, and yet a 
little more, his own separate exercise, but still the same 
in character. The contrary assumption, that virtue 
must be the product of separate and absolutely inde¬ 
pendent choice, is pure assumption. As regards the 
measure of personal merit and demerit, it is doubtless 
true that every subject of God is to be responsible only 
for what is his own. But virtue still is rather a state of 
being than an act or series of acts; and, if we look at 
the causes which induce or prepare such a state, the will 
of the person himself may have a part among these 
causes more or less important, and it works no absurdity 
to suppose that one may be even prepared to such a 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 81 . 

state, by causes prior to bis own will; so that, when be 
sets off to act for bimself, bis struggle and duty may be 
ratber to sustain and perfect tbe state begun, than to 
produce a new one. Certain it is that we are never, at 
any age, so independent as to be wholly out of tbe 
reach of organic laws which affect our character. 

All society is organic—tbe church, the state, the 
school, the family; and there is a spirit in each of these 
organisms, peculiar to itself, and more or less hostile, 
more or less favorable to religious character, and to some 
extent, at least, sovereign over the individual man. A 
very great share of the power in what is called a revi¬ 
val of religion, is organic power; nor is it any the less 
divine on that account. The child is only more within 
the power of organic laws than we all are. We possess 
only a mixed individuality all our life long. A pure, 
separate, individual man, living wholly within, and from 
himself is a mere fiction. No such person ever existed, 
or ever can. I need not say that this view of an or¬ 
ganic connection of character subsisting between parent 
and child, lays a basis for notions of Christian educa¬ 
tion, far different from those which now prevail, un¬ 
der the cover of a merely fictitious and mischievous 
individualism. 

Perhaps it may be necessary to add, that, in the strong 
language I have used concerning the organic connection 
of character between the parent and the child, it is not 
designed to assert a power in the parent to renew the 
child, or that the child can be renewed by any agency 
of the Spirit less immediate, than that which renews the 


32 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


parent himself. When a germ is formed on the stem 
of any plant, the formative instinct of the plant may be 
said in one view to produce it; but the same solar heat 
which quickens the plant, must quicken also the germ, 
and sustain the internal action of growth, by a common 
presence in both. So, if there be an organic power of 
character in the parent, such as that of which I have 
spoken, it is not a complete power in itself, but only such 
a power as demands the realizing presence of the Spirit 
of God, both in the parent and the child, to give it 
effect. As Paul said, “ I have begotten you through 
the gospel,” so may we say of the parent, who, having 
a living gospel enveloped in his life, brings it into or¬ 
ganic connection with the soul of childhood. But the 
declaration excludes the necessity of a divine influence, 
not more in one case than in the other. 

Such are some of the considerations that offer them¬ 
selves, viewing our subject on the human side, or as it 
appears in the light of human evidence—all concurring 
to produce the conviction, that it is the only true idea 
of Christian education, that the child is to grow up in 
the life of the parent, and be a Christian in principle, 
from his earliest years. 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


“Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”— Ephe~ 
nans, vi. 4. 

We proceed now to inquire— 

II. How far God, in the revelation made of his char¬ 
acter and will, favors the view of Christian nurture 
vindicated, in a former discourse, by arguments and 
evidences of an inferior nature ? And— 

1. According to all that God has taught us concern¬ 
ing his own dispositions, he desires on his part, that 
children should grow up in piety, as earnestly as the 
parent can desire it; nay, as much more earnestly, as 
he hates sin more intensely, and desires good with less 
mixture of qualification. Goodness, or the production 
of goodness, is the supreme end of God, and therefore, 
we know, on first principles, that he desires to bestow 
whatsoever spiritual grace is necessary to the moral 
renovation of childhood, and will do it, unless some 
collateral reasons in his plan, involving the extension 
of holy virtue, require him to withhold. 

Thus, if nothing were hung upon parental faithful¬ 
ness and example, if the child were not used, in some 
degree or way, as an argument, to hold the parent to a 
life of Christian diligence, then the good principle in 


34 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

the parent might lack the necessary stimulus to bring it 
to maturity. Or, if all children alike, in spite of the 
evil and unchristian example of the house, were to 
be started into life as spiritually renewed, one of the 
strongest motives to holy living would be taken away 
from parents, in the fact that their children are safe 
as regards a good beginning, without any carefulness 
in them, or prayerfulness in their life; and their own 
virtue might so overgrow itself with weeds, as never to 
attain to a sound maturity. Let it be enough to know, 
on first principles in the character of God, that he will 
so dispense his spiritual agency to you and to your 
children, as to produce, considering the freedom of you 
both, the best measure and the ripest state of holy vir¬ 
tue. And how far short is this of the conclusion, that 
if you live as you ought and may yourselves, God will 
so dispense his Spirit that you may see your children 
grow up in piety? 

Observe, too, that he expressly pledges his Holy Spirit 
to you, as one of his first gifts, and, what is more, even 
commands you to be filled with the Spirit; and consid¬ 
ering the organic relation that subsists, by his own ap¬ 
pointment, between you and your children, how far off 
is he, in this, from pledging you a mercy that accrues 
to their benefit ? He appoints you also to be a light to 
the world, and, by the grace he pours into your being, 
prepares you to be; how much more a light to minds 
that are fed by simple nurture from your own ? And 
when you consider how fond he is, if I may so speak, 
in the blessings he pours on the good, of gathering their 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 35 

children with them in the same circle of favor, how 
many of his promises, in all ages, run—“ to you and to 
your children,” what better assurance can you reason¬ 
ably ask, to fortify your confidence in whatever spirit¬ 
ual grace may be necsssary to your utmost success ? 

2. If there be any such thing as Christian nurture, 
distinguished from that which is not Christian, which is 
generally admitted, and, by the Scriptures clearly as¬ 
serted, then is it some kind of nurture which God ap¬ 
points. Does it then accord with the known character 
of God, to appoint a scheme of education, the only 
proper result of which shall be that children are trained 
up under it in sin ? It would not be more absurd to 
suppose that God has appointed church education, to 
produce a first crop of sin, and then a crop of holiness. 
God appoints nothing of which sin, and only sin, is to 
be the proper and legitimate result, whether for a longer 
or a shorter time; least of all, a mode of training which 
is to produce sin. Holy virtue is the aim of every plan 
God adopts, every means he prescribes, and we have no 
right to look only for sin, in that which he has ap¬ 
pointed as a means of virtue. We can not do it under¬ 
standing^ without great impiety. 

3. God does expressly lay it upon us to expect that 
our children will grow up in piety, under the parental 
nurture, and assumes the possibility that such a result 
may ordinarily be realized. *‘ Train up a child ”—how ? 
for future conversion ?—Ho, “ but in the way he should 
go, that when he is old he may not depart from it.” If 
it be said that this relates only to outward habits of vir- 


36 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

tue and vice, not to spiritual life, the Old Testament, I 
reply, does not raise that distinction, as it is raised in 
the New. It puts all good together, all evil together, 
and regards a child trained up in the way he should go, 
as going in all the ways, and fulfilling all the ideas of 
virtue. The phraseology of the New Testament carries 
the same import. “ Bring them up in the nurture and 
admonition of the Lord,” a form of expression, which 
indicates the existence of a Divine nurture, that is to 
encompass the child and mold him unto God ; so that 
he shall be brought up, as it were, in Him. 

4. A time is foretold, as our churches generally be¬ 
lieve, when all shall know God, even from the least to 
the greatest; that is, shall spiritually know him, or so 
that there shall be no need of exhorting one another to 
know him ; for intellectual knowledge is not carried by 
exhortation. If such a time is ever to come, then, at 
least, children are to grow up in Christ. Can it come 
too soon ? And, if we have the opinion that any such 
thing is impossible, either we, or those who come after 
us, must get rid of it. A principal reason why the 
great expectations of the future, that we, in this age, 
are giving out so confidently, seem only visionary and 
idle dreams to many, is that we are perpetually assum¬ 
ing their impossibility ourselves. Our very theory of 
religion is, that men are to grow up in evil, and be 
dragged into the church of God by conquest. The 
world is to lie in halves, and the kingdom of God is to 
stretch itself side by side with the kingdom of darkness, 
making sallies into it, and taking captive those who are 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 87 

sufficiently hardened and bronzed in guiltiness to be 
converted! 

Thus we assume even the absurdity of all our expect¬ 
ations in regard to the possible advancement of human 
society and the universal prevalence of Christian virtue. 
And thus we throw an air of extravagance and unrea¬ 
son over all we do. Whereas there is a sober and 
rational possibility, that human society should be uni¬ 
versally pervaded by Christian virtue. The Christian 
scheme has a scope of intention, and instruments and 
powers adequate to this: it descends upon the world to 
claim all souls for its dominion—all men of all climes, 
all ages from childhood to the grave. It is, indeed, a 
plan which supposes the existence of sin, and sin will 
be in the world, and in all hearts in it, as long as the 
world or human society continues ; but the scheme has 
a breadth of conception, and has powers and provisions 
embodied in it, which, apart from all promises and pre¬ 
dictions, certify us of a day when it will reign in all 
human hearts, and all that live shall live in Christ. Let 
us either renounce any such confidence, or show, by a 
thorough consistency in our religious doctrines, that we 
hold it deliberately and manfully. 

5. We discover in the Scriptures that the organic 
law, of which I have spoken, is distinctly recognized, 
and that character in children is often regarded as, in 
some very important sense, derivative from their parents. 
It is thus that “ sin has passed upon all men.” “ By 
the offense of one, judgment came upon all.” Christian 
faith is also spoken of in a similar way—“ The un- 
4 


38 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


feigned faith, which dwelt first, in thy grandmother Lois, 
and thy mother Eunice, and, I am persuaded, that in 
thee also.” Not that, in the bald and naked sense, it 
had descended thus through three generations. But 
the apostle conceives a power, in the good life of these 
mothers, that must needs transmit some flavor of piety. 
In like manner, God is represented as “ keeping cove¬ 
nant and mercy with them that love him and keep his 
commandments, to a thousand generations which, if it 
signifies any thing, amounts to a declaration that he will 
spiritually own and bless every succeeding generation, 
to the end of the world, if only the preceding will live 
so as to be fit vehicles of his blessing ; for it is not any 
covenant, as a form of mutual contract, which carries 
the divine favor, but it is the loving Him rather, and 
keeping His commandments, by an upright, godly life, 
which sets the parents on terms of friendship with God, 
and secures the inhabitation of his power. 

Declarations like those in the eighteenth chapter of 
Ezekiel, “ the son shall not bear the iniquity of the 
father,”—“the soul that sinneth, it shall die,”—are 
hastily applied by many, not to show that the child is 
to be punished only for his own sin, which is their true 
import, but, as if it were the same thing, to disprove the 
fact of an organic connection, by which children receive 
a character from their parents. Whereas this latter is 
a truth which we see with our eyes, and one that is con¬ 
stantly affirmed in the Scriptures, both in respect to bad 
character and to good. “ God layeth up the iniquity of 
the wicked for his children,”—“ Visiting the iniquities 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


89 


of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth 
generation.” By which we are to understand, what is 
every day exhibited in actual historic proof, that the 
wickedness of parents propagates itself in the character 
and condition of their children, and that it ordinarily 
requires three or four generations to ripen the sad har¬ 
vest of misery and debasement. Again, on the other 
side, “ he hath blessed thy children with thee,”—“ For 
the good of them and their children after them,”—“ For 
the promise is to you and to your children.” The Scrip¬ 
tures have a perpetual habit, if I may so speak, of asso¬ 
ciating children with the character and destiny of their 
parents. In this respect, they maintain a marked con¬ 
trast with the extreme individualism of our modern 
philosophy. They do not always regard the individual 
as an isolated unit, but they often look upon men as 
they exist, in families and races, and under organic 
laws. 

Something has undoubtedly been gained to modern 
theology, as a human science, by fixing the attention 
strongly upon the individual man, as a moral agent, im¬ 
mediately related to God, and responsible only for his 
own actions; at the same time there was a truth, an 
important truth, underlying the old doctrine of federal 
headship and original or imputed sin, though strangely 
misconceived, which we seem, in our one-sided specula¬ 
tions, to have quite lost sight of. And how can we 
ever attain to any right conception of organic duties, 
until we discover the reality of organic powers and rela¬ 
tions ? And how can we hope to set ourselves in har- 


40 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 

mony with, the Scriptures, in regard to family nurture, 
or household baptism, or any other kindred subject, 
while our theories include, or overlook precisely that 
which is the base of their teachings, and appointments ? 
This brings me to my— 

Last argument, which is drawn from infant or house¬ 
hold baptism—a rite which supposes the fact of an or¬ 
ganic connection of character between the parent and 
the child; a seal of faith in the parent, applied over to 
the child, on the ground of a presumption that his faith 
is wrapped up in the parent’s faith; so that he is ac¬ 
counted a believer from the beginning. We must dis 
tinguish here between a fact and a presumption of fact. 
If you look upon a seed of wheat, it contains, in itself, 
presumptively, a thousand generations of wheat, though 
by reason of some fault in the cultivation, or some speck 
of diseased matter in itself, it may, in fact, never repro¬ 
duce at all. So the Christian parent has, in his charac¬ 
ter, a germ, which has power, presumptively, to produce 
its like in his children, though by reason of some bad 
fault in itself, or possibly some outward hindrance in 
the Church, or some providence of death, it may fail to 
do so. Thus it is that infant baptism becomes an ap¬ 
propriate rite. It sees the child in the parent, counts 
him presumptively a believer and a Christian, and, with 
the parent, baptizes him also. Furthermore, you will 
perceive that it must be presumed, either that the child 
will grow up a believer, or that he will not. The Bap¬ 
tist presumes that he will not, and therefore declares the 
right to be inappropriate. God presumes that he will, 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


41 


and therefore appoints it. The Baptist tells the child 
that nothing but sin can be expected of him; God tells 
him that for his parents’ sakes, whose faith he is to fol¬ 
low, he has written his own name upon him, and ex¬ 
pects him to grow up in all duty and piety. 

I have no desire to press the passages in which men¬ 
tion is made of household baptism beyond their true 
import. When Paul is said to have “-baptized the 
household of Stephanas,” our Baptist friends reply that 
the text proves nothing, in respect to infant baptism, 
because it can not be shown that there were any chil¬ 
dren in the household; and some, who practice infant 
baptism, have conceded the sufficiency of the objection. 
But the power of this proof-text does not depend, in 
the least, on the fact that there were children in the 
household of Stephanas, but simply on the form of the 
language. Indeed, it has always seemed to me that the 
argument for infant baptism is rather strengthened than 
weakened, by the supposition that there were, in fact, 
no infants or children in this household; for a house¬ 
hold generally contains children, and a term so inclu¬ 
sive in its import, could never come into use, unless it 
was the practice for baptism to go by households. 
Under a practice like that of our Baptist brethren, what 
preacher would ever be heard to speak, in this general 
inclusive way, of having baptized a household ? In 
the case of the jailor, too, the same reasoning holds. 
Here, however, our Baptist brethren go farther, endeav¬ 
oring to show positively, from the language used, that 
there were no infants or children in the household; for 
4 * 


42 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


when it is said that the jailor “rejoiced, believing in 
God with all his house,” it is argued that, inasmuch as 
infant children are incapable of believing, there could 
have been no infants in the family. Admitting the cor¬ 
rectness of the translation, which some have questioned, 
the argument seems rather plausible as a turn of logic, 
than just and convincing; for, if we consider the more 
decisive position held in that age by the heads of fami¬ 
lies, and how, in common speech, they were supposed 
to carry the religion of the family with them, we shall 
be convinced that nothing was more natural than the 
very language here used. It was taken for granted, as 
a matter of common understanding, that, in a change 
of religion, the children went with the parents : if they 
became Jews, that their children would be Jews; if 
Christian believers, that their children would be Chris ^ 
tians. Hence all the terms used, in reference to their 
religion, took the most inclusive form. If one believed 
in God, he believed with all his house: the change he 
suffered, in the common understanding of the age, car¬ 
ried the house with him; and it occurred to no one to 
question the literal exactness of such like inclusive terms. 

It has been a fashion, with many modern critics, to 
surrender both th'jse passages as proofs of infant bap¬ 
tism, and they certainly do not prove it, in just the way 
in which many have used them as proof-texts. But if 
any one will seek a point of view, whence he may be 
able to give a natural and easy interpretation to the lan¬ 
guage used, or if he will ask, on the simple doctrine of 
chances, what chance there was that these two house* 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 43 

holds should include no children, and moreover what 
chance that, in the only two cases of household baptism 
mentioned in the Scripture, the households should have 
been distinguished by this singularity, he will be as 
little likely as possible, to concede the fact that infant 
baptism is not adequately proved by these passages. 

But the true idea of these passages, and also of the 
rite itself, is seen most evidently in the history of its 
establishment by Christ, in the third chapter of John. 
The Jewish nation regarded other nations as unclean. 
Hence, when a Gentile family wished to become Jewish 
citizens, they were baptized in token of cleansing. Then 
they were said to be re-born, or regenerated, so as to be 
accounted true descendants of Abraham. We use the 
term naturalize , that is, to make natural born, in the same 
sense. But Christ had come to set up a spiritual king¬ 
dom, the kingdom of heaven; and finding all men aliens, 
and spiritually unclean, he applies over the rite of bap¬ 
tism, which was familiar to the Jews, (“ art thou a Mas¬ 
ter in Israel, and knowest not these things ? ”) giving it 
a higher sense. “ Except a man be born of water and 
of the Spirit , he can not enter the kingdom of heaven.” 
But the Gentile proselyte, according to the custom here 
described—here is the point of the argument—came 
with his family. They were all baptized together, 
young and old, all regenerated or naturalized together; 
and therefore, in the new application made of the rite 
to signify spiritual cleansing and regeneration, it is un¬ 
derstood, of course, that children are to come with their 
parents. To have excluded them would have been, to 


44 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


every Jewish mind, the hight of absurdity. They 
could not have been excluded, without express except 
tion, and no exception was made. 

Some have questioned whether proselyte baptism 
existed at this early age; but of this the third chapter 
cf John is itself conclusive proof; for how else was 
baptism familiarly known to the Jews as connected with 
regeneration; that is, civil regeneration? There is 
always a historic reason for leligious rites and for usages 
of language; and you will find it impossible to suppose 
that Christ appointed baptism, and set the rite in con¬ 
nection with spiritual regeneration, by any mere acci¬ 
dent, or without some historic basis, answering to that 
which I have just described. In this manner, all his 
language, in the interview with bTicodemus, becomes 
natural and easy. 

It follows that the children of Christian disciples, 
being baptized with their parents, as the children of 
Gentile proselytes were baptized with theirs, would be 
taken or presumed by the church to be spiritually 
cleansed, in the same manner. Accordingly, just as the 
children of Jews were accounted Jews, and not as un¬ 
clean, when one of the parents was a Jew, so Paul tells 
us, that in the church of God, the believing party sanc¬ 
tifies the unbelieving, “ else were your children unclean, 
bit now are they holy; ” showing that the Jewish analo¬ 
gies, in regard to children, were in fact translated, oi 
passed over to the church, and adopted there—a trans¬ 
lation that naturally followed, from the reapplication 
of proselyte baptism. 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 45 

Then passing into the early history of the church, we 
hear Justin Martyr saying: “There are some of us, 
eighty years old, who were made disciples to Christ in 
their childhood;” that is, in the age of the apostles, and 
while they were yet living; for' it was now less than 
eighty years since their death. And in the expression 
“ made disciples ,” taken in connection with the baptis¬ 
mal formula, “ Go disciple all nations, baptizing,” &c., 
we see that he alludes to baptism; for baptism was the 
rite that introduced the subject into the Christian school 
as a disciple ; and what so natural as that the children 
of disciples should be disciples with them ? 

Then again, Ireneus, who lived within one generation 
of the apostles, gives us the second mention of this rite 
which appears in history, when he says: “ Christ came 
to save all persons through himself; all, I say, who 
through him are regenerated unto God: infants and 
little ones, and children and youth, and the aged.” 
Which phrase, “ regenerated unto God ,” applied to parents 
and little ones, alludes to baptism : showing that a no¬ 
tion of baptism, as connected with regeneration, coinci¬ 
dent with that which we found in the third chapter of 
John, was then current in the church. 

I have been thus full upon the rite of baptism, not 
because that is my subject, but because the rite involves, 
in all its grounds and reasons, the same view of Chiis- 
tion education which I am seeking to establish. One 
can not be thoroughly understood and received without 
the other. And it is precisely on this account that we 
have so great difficulty in sustaining the rite of infan t 


40 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

baptism. It ought to be difficult to sustain any rite, 
after the sense of it is wholly gone from us. You per¬ 
ceive, too, in this exposition, that the view of Christian 
nurture I am endeavoring to vindicate, is not new, but 
is older, by far, than the one now prevalent—as old as 
the Christian church. It is radically one with the an¬ 
cient doctrine of baptism and regeneration, advanced 
by Christ, and accepted by the first fathers. 

We have much to say of baptismal regeneration as a 
great error, which undoubtedly it is, in the form in 
which it is held; but it is only a less hurtful error than 
some of us hold in denying it. The distinction between 
our doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and the ancient 
Scripture view, is too broad and palpable to be mis¬ 
taken. According to the modern church dogma, no 
faith, in the parents, is necessary to the effect of the rite. 
Sponsors, too, are brought in between all parents and 
their duty, to assume the very office which belongs only 
to them. And, what is worse, the child is said to be 
actually regenerated by the act of the priest. Accord¬ 
ing to the more ancient view, or that of the Scriptures, 
nothing depends upon the priest or minister, save that 
he execute the rite in due form. The regeneration is 
uot actual, but only presumptive, and every thing de¬ 
pends upon the organic law of character pertaining be¬ 
tween the parent and the child, the church and the child, 
thus upon duty and holy living and gracious exam¬ 
ple. The child is too young to choose the rite for him¬ 
self, but the parent, having him as it were in his own 
life, is allowed the confidence that his own faith and 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 47 

character will be reproduced in the child, and grow up 
in bis growth, and that thus the propriety of the rite as 
a seal of faith will not be violated. In giving us this 
rite, on the grounds stated, God promises, in fact, on 
his part, to dispense that spiritual grace which is neces¬ 
sary to the fulfillment of its import. In this way toe 
is it seen that the Christian economy has a place for 
persons of all ages; for it would be singular if, after all 
we say of the universality of God’s mercy as a gift to 
the human race, it could yet not limber itself to man, 
so as to adapt a place for the age of childhood, but must 
leave a full fourth part of the race, the part least hard¬ 
ened in evil and tenderest to good, unrecognized and 
unprovided for—gathering a flock without lambs, or, I 
should rather say, gathering a flock away from the 
lambs. Such is not the spirit of Him who said, “ for¬ 
bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” 
Therefore we bring them into the school of Christ and 
the pale of his mercy with us, there to be trained up in 
the holy nurture of the Lord. And then the result is 
to be tested afterwards, or at an advanced period of life, 
by trying their character in the same way as the char¬ 
acter of all Christians is tried ; for many are baptized 
in adult age, who truly do not believe, as is afterwards 
discovered. And yet our Baptist brethren never re¬ 
baptize them, notwithstanding all they say of faith as 
the necessary condition of baptism. 

But there are two objections to this view of Christian 
nurture, which, if they are not removed, may even suf¬ 
fice to break the force of my argument. 


48 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


1. A theoretical objection, that it leaves no room for 
the sovereignty of God, in appointing the moral char¬ 
acter of men and families. Thus it is declared that “ all 
are not Israel who are of Israel,” and that God, before 
the children Jacob and Esau had done either good or 
evil, professed his love to one, and his rejection of the 
other. But the wonder is, in this case of Bebecca and 
her children, that such a mother did not ruin them both. 
A partial mother, scorning one child, teaching the other 
to lie and trick his blind father, and extort from a starv¬ 
ing brother his birthright honor, can not be said to fur¬ 
nish a very good test of the power of Christian educa¬ 
tion. But show me the case, where the whole conduct 
of the parents has been such as it should be to produce 
the best effects, and where the sovereignty of God has 
appointed the ruin of the children, whether all, or any 
one of them. The sovereignty of God has always a 
relation to means, and we are not authorized to think 
of it, in any case, as separated from means. 

2. An objection from observation—asking why it is, 
if our doctrine be true, that many persons, remarkable 
for their piety, have yet been so unfortunate in their 
children ? Because, I answer, many persons, remark¬ 
able for their piety, are yet very disagreeable persons, 
and that too, by reason of some very marked defect in 
their religious character. They display just that spirit, 
and act in just that manner, which is likely to make 
religion odious—the more odious, the more urgently 
they commend it. Sometimes they appear well to the 
world one remove distant from them, they shine well in 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 49 

their written biography, but one living in their family 
will know what others do. not; and if their children 
turn out badly, will never be at a loss for the reason. 
Many persons, too, have such defective views of the 
manner of teaching appropriate to early childhood, that 
they really discourage their children. “Fathers pro¬ 
voke not your children to anger,” says one, “ lest they 
be discouragedimplying that there is such a thing as 
encouraging, and such a thing as discouraging good 
principle and piety in’ a child. And there are other 
ways of discouraging children besides provoking them 
to an angry and wounded feeling by harsh treatment. 

I once took up a book, from a Sabbath-school library, 
one problem of which was to teach a child that he wants 
a new heart. A lovely boy (for it was a narrative) was 
called every day to resolve that he would do no wrong 
that day, a task which he undertook most cheerfully, 
at first, and even with a show of delight. But, before 
the sun went down, he was sure to fall into some ill- 
temper or be overtaken by some infirmity. Where¬ 
upon, the conclusion was immediately sprung upon 
him that he “ wanted a new heart.” We are even 
■amazed that any teacher of ordinary intelligence should 
not once have imagined how she herself, or how the 
holiest Christian living, would fare under such kind of 
regimen; how she would discover every day, and prob¬ 
ably some hours before sunset, that she too wanted a 
new heart ? And the practical cruelty of the experi¬ 
ment is yet more to be deplored, than its want of con¬ 
sideration. Had the problem been how to di»*ourage 
5 


50 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


most effectually every ingenuous struggle of childhood, 
no readier or surer method could have been devised. 

Simply to tell a child, as he just begins to make 
acquaintance with words, that he “ must have a new 
heart before he can be good,” is to inflict a double dis¬ 
couragement. First, he can not guess what this tech¬ 
nical phraseology means, and thus he takes up the 
impression that he can do or think nothing right, till 
he is able to comprehend what is above his age—why 
then should he make the endeavor ? Secondly, he is told 
that he must have a new heart before he can be good, 
not that he may hope to exercise a renewed spirit, in 
the endeavor to be good—why then attempt what must 
be worthless, till something 'previous befalls him ? Dis¬ 
couraged thus on every side, his tender soul turns hither 
and thither, in hopeless despair, and finally he consents 
to be what he must—a sinner against God, and that 
only. Well is it, under such a process, wearing down 
his childish soul into soreness and despair of good, seal¬ 
ing up his nature in silence and cessation as regards all 
right endeavors, and compelling him to turn his feel¬ 
ings into other channels, where he shall find his good 
in evil—well is it, I say, if he has not contracted a dis¬ 
like to the very subject of religion, as inveterate as the 
subject is impossible. 

Many teach in this way, no doubt, with the best in¬ 
tentions imaginable; their design is only to be faithful, 
and sometimes they appear even to think that the more 
they discourage their children, the better and more faith¬ 
ful they are. But the mistake, if not cruelly meant, is 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 51 

certainly most cruel in tlie experience; and it is just 
this mistake, I am confident, which accounts for a large 
share of the unhappy failures made by Christian pa« 
rents, in the training of their children. Rather should 
they begin with a kind of teaching suited to the age of 
the child. First of all, they should rather seek to teach 
a feeling than a doctrine ; to bathe the child in their own 
feeling of love to God, and dependence on him, and 
contrition for wrong before him, bearing up their child’s 
heart in their own, not fearing to encourage every good 
motion they can call into exercise; to make what is 
good, happy and attractive, what is wrong, odious and 
hateful; then as the understanding advances, to give it 
food suited to its capacity, opening upon it, gradually 
the more difficult views of Christian doctrine and 
experience. 

Sometimes Christian parents fail of success in the 
religious training of their children, because the church 
counteracts their effort and example. The church 
makes a bad atmosphere about the house, and the poi¬ 
son comes in at the doors and windows. It is rent by 
divisions, burnt up by fanaticism, frozen by the chill 
of a worldly spirit, petrified in a rigid and dead ortho¬ 
doxy. It makes no element of genial warmth and love 
about the child, according to the intention of Christ in 
its appointment, but gives to religion, rather, a forbid¬ 
ding aspect, and thus, instead of assisting the parent, 
becomes one of the worst impediments to his success. 
What kind of element the world makes about the child 
is of little consequence; for here there is no pretence 


52 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

of piety. But when the school of Christ makes itself 
an element of sin and death, the child’s baptism be¬ 
comes as great a fiction as the church itself, and the 
arrangements of divine mercy fail of their intended 
power. There are, in short, too many ways of account¬ 
ing for the failure of success, in the family training of 
those who are remarkable for their piety, without being 
led to doubt the correctness of my argument in these 
discourses. 

To sum up all, we conclude, not that every child can 
certainly be made to grow up in Christian piety—noth¬ 
ing is gained by asserting so much, and perhaps I could 
not prove it to be true, neither can any one prove the 
contrary—I merely show that this is the true idea and 
aim of Christian nurture as a nurture of the Lord. It 
is presumptively true that such a result can be realized, 
just as it is presumptively true that a school will for¬ 
ward the pupils in knowledge, though possibly some¬ 
times it may fail to do it. And, without such a pre¬ 
sumption, no parent can do his duty and fill his office 
well, any more than it is possible to make a good school, 
in the expectation that the scholars will learn something 
five or ten years hence, and not before. 

To give this subject its practical effect, let me 
urge it— 

1. Upon the careful attention of those who neglect, 
or decline, offering their children in baptism. Some of 
you are simply indifferent to this duty, not seeing what 
good it can do to baptize a child ; others have positive 
theological objections to it. With the former class I 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 63 

certainly agree, so far as to admit that baptism, as an 
operation, can do no good to your child; but, if it has 
no importance in what it operates, it has the greatest 
importance in what it signifies; and, what is more to be 
deplored by you, the withholding it signifies as much, 
viz : that you yourselves have no sense of the relation 
that subsists between your character and that of your 
child, and as little of the mercy that Christ intends for 
your child, by including him with you in his fold, to 
grow up there by your side in the same common hopes. 
Had you any just sense of these things, you would look 
upon the baptism of your child as a rite of as great 
importance and spiritual propr s your own; for, in 
neither case, has the form any value beyond what it 
signifies. The other class among you suffer the same 
defect; for it is my settled conviction that no man ever 
objected to infant baptism, who had not at the bottom 
of his objections, false views of Christian education— 
who did not hold a notion of individualism, in regard 
to Christian character in childhood, whicli is justified, 
neither by observation nor by Scripture. 

It is the prevalence of false views, on this subject, 
which creates so great difficulty in sustaining infant 
baptism in our churches. If children are to grow up 
in sin, to be converted when they come to the age of 
maturity, if this is the only aim and expectation of 
family nurture, there really is no meaning or dignity 
whatever in the rite. They are even baptized into sin, 
and every propriety of the rite as a seal of faith is vio¬ 
lated. And it is the feeling of this impropriety which 
5 * 


54 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


lies at tile basis of all your objections. Returning to 
tbe old Scripture doctrine of an organic law, connecting 
the child morally with the parents, so that he is, as it 
were, included in them, to grow up in their life; per¬ 
ceiving then that he is a kind of rudimental being, 
coming up gradually into a separate and complete indi¬ 
viduality, having the parental life extended to him, first, 
with an almost absolutely controlling power, then less 
and less, till he takes, at length, the helm of his own 
spirit—every difficulty that you now feel vanishes, and 
the rite of infant baptism becomes one of the greatest 
beauty, and perfectly coincident with the spirit and the 
rules of adult baptism. The very command, “ believe 
and be baptized,” of which so much is made, is exactly 
met, and with no modifications, save what are necessary 
to suit the peculiar state and age of childhood : for the 
child, being included as it were in the parental life, is 
accounted presumptively one with the parents, and 
sealed with the seal of their faith. 

And it would certainly be very singular if Christ 
Jesus, in a scheme of mercy for the world, had found 
no place for infants and little children: more singular 
still, if he had given them the place of adults; and 
worse than singular, if he had appointed them to years 
of sin as the necessary preparation for his mercy. But 
if you see him counting them one with you, bringing 
them tenderly into his fold with you, there to grow up 
in him, you will not doubt that he has given them a 
place exactly and beautifully suited to them. And is 
it for you to withhold them from that place ? Is it 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


65 


worthy of your tenderness, as a Christian parent, to 
leave them outside of the fold, when the gate is open, 
only taking care to go in yourself? I will not accuse 
you of intended wrong, but I am quite sure your 
thoughts are not as God’s thoughts, and I ask you to 
study this question again, and more deeply. You are 
giving your children, as they grow up, impressions that 
will assuredly be very injurious to them, and robbing 
them of impressions that would have great power and 
value to their minds. What can be worse, what can 
make them aliens, more sensibly, from Christ’s sympa¬ 
thies, what can more effectually discourage and chill 
them to all thoughts of a good life, than to make them 
feel that Christ has no place for them till their sins are 
ripe, and they are capable of a grace that is now above 
their years ? What more persuasive, than to know that 
he has taken them into his school already, to grow up 
round him as disciples ? And if God should call you to 
himself what will draw upon their hearts more tenderly 
than to remember that the father and mother whose 
name they revere, brought them believingly in with 
themselves, to be owned in that general assembly of the 
just which occupies both worlds, and become partakers 
with them there, in the grace which is now their song ? 

You rob yourselves too of an influence which is nec¬ 
essary to a right fulfillment of your duty. Their char¬ 
acter, you say, is their own ; let them believe for them¬ 
selves and be baptized when they will. You have 
never the same genial feeling that you would, if you 
regarded them as morally linked to your character and 


56 


WHAl CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


drawing from you the mold of their being. You are not 
kept in the same state of carefulness and spiritual ten¬ 
derness. No matter if you are cold to them, at times, 
and do not always live Christ in the house, they are 
growing up to be converted, and almost any thing is 
good enough for conversion! Christ himself, too, has no 
such relation to you, in your family, as to make your 
piety a domestic spirit. He has not gathered your chil¬ 
dren round you, as a flock of young disciples, pouring 
all his tenderness into your family ties, to make them ve¬ 
hicles of mercy and blessing. Once more I ask you to 
consider whether God is not better to you than you your¬ 
selves have thought, and whether, in withholding your 
children from God, you are not like to fall as far short 
of your duty, as you do of the privilege offered you. 

2. What motives are laid upon all Christian parents, 
by the doctrine I have established, to make the first 
article of family discipline a constant and careful disci¬ 
pline of themselves. I would not undervalue a strong 
and decided government in families. No family can be 
rightly trained without it. But there is a kind of vir¬ 
tue, my brethren, which is not in the rod—the virtue, I 
mean, of a truly good and sanctified life. And a reign 
of brute force is much more easily maintained, than a 
reign whose power is righteousness and love. There 
are, too, I must warn you, many who talk much of the 
rod as the orthodox symbol of parental duty, but who 
might really as well be heathens as Christians; who 
only storm about their house with heathenish ferocity, 
who lecture, and threaten, and castigate, and bruise, 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 57 

and call this family government. They even dare to 
speak of this as the nurture of the Lord. So much 
easier is it to be violent than to be holy, that they sub¬ 
stitute force for goodness and grace, and are wholly 
unconscious of the imposture. It is frightful to think 
how they batter and bruise the delicate, tender souls 
of their children, extinguishing in them what they 
ought to cultivate, crushing that sensibility which is 
the hope of their being, and all in the sacred name of 
Christ Jesus. By no such summary process can you 
dispatch your duties to your children. You are not to 
be a savage to them, but a father and a Christian. Your 
real aim and study must be to infuse into them a new 
life, and, to this end, the Life of God must perpetually 
reign in you. Gathered round you as a family, they 
are all to be so many motives, strong as the love you 
bear them, to make you Christ-like in your spirit. It 
must be seen and felt with them that religion is a first 
thing with you. And it must be first, not in words 
and talk, but visibly first in your love—that which 
fixes your aims, feeds your enjoyments, sanctifies your 
pleasures, supports your trials, satisfies your wants, 
contents your ambition, beautifies and blesses your 
character. No mock piety, no sanctimony of phrase, 
or longitude of face on Sundays will suffice. You must 
live in the light of God, and hold such a spirit in 
exercise as you wish to see translated into your chil¬ 
dren. You must take them into your feeling, as a 
loving and joyous element, and beget, if by the grace 
of God you may, the spirit of your own heart in theirs. 


58 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

This is Christian education, the nurture of the Lord. 
Ah, how dismal is the contrast of a half-worldly, carnal 
piety; proposing money as the good thing of life; stimu¬ 
lating ambition for place and show; provoking ill-nature 
by petulance and falsehood; praying, to save the rule 
of family worship; having now and then a religious fit, 
and, when it is on, weeping and exhorting the family 
to undo all that the life has taught them to do; and 
then, when the passions have burnt out their fire, drop¬ 
ping down again to sleep in the embers, only hoping 
still that the family will sometime be converted! When 
shall we discover that families ought to be ruined by 
such training as this ? When shall we turn ourselves 
wholly to God, and looking on our children as one with 
us and drawing their character from us, make them 
arguments to duty and constancy—duty and constancy 
not as a burden, but, since they are enforced by motives 
so dear, our pleasure and delight. For these ties and 
duties exist not for the religious good of our children 
only, but quite as much for our own. And God, who 
understands us well, has appointed them to keep us in 
a perpetual frame of love; for so ready is our bad 
nature to kindle with our good, and burn with it, that 
what we call our piety, is, otherwise, in constant danger 
of degenerating into a fiery, censorious, unmerciful and 
intolerant spirit. 

Hence it is that monks have been so prone to perse¬ 
cution. Not dwelling with children as the objects of 
affection, having their hearts softened by no family 
love, their life identified with no objects that excite 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 59 

gentleness, their nature hardens into a Christian abstrac¬ 
tion, and blood and doctrine go together. Therefore 
God hath set Israel in families, that the argument to 
duty may come upon the gentle side of your nature, 
and fall, as a baptism, on the head of your natural affec¬ 
tions. Your character is to be a parent character, in¬ 
folding lovingly the spirits of your children, as birds 
are gathered in the nest, there to be sheltered and fed, 
and got ready for the flight. Every hour is to be an 
hour of duty, every look and smile, every reproof and 
care, an effusion of Christian love. For it is the very 
beauty of the work you have to do that you are to 
cherish and encourage good, and live a better life into 
the spirits of your children. 

3. It is to be deeply considered, in connection with 
this view of family nurture, whether it does not meet 
many of the deficiencies we deplore in the Christian 
character of our times, and the present state of our 
churches. We have been expecting to thrive too much 
by conquest, and too little by growth. I desire to speak 
with all caution of what are very unfortunately called 
revivals of religion; for, apart from the name, which is 
modern, and from certain crudities and excesses that go 
with it—which name, crudities, and excesses are wholly 
adventitious as regards the substantial merits of such 
scenes—apart from these, I say, there is abundant rea¬ 
son to believe that God’s spiritual economy includes 
varieties of exercise, answering, in all important re¬ 
spects, to these visitations of mercy, so much coveted 
m our churches. They are needed. A perfectly uni- 


60 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 


form demonstration in religion is not possible or desira¬ 
ble. Nothing is thus uniform but death. Our exercise 
varies every year and day from childhood onward. 
Society is going through new modes of exercise in the 
same manner, excited by new subjects, running into 
new types of feeling, and struggling witn new combina¬ 
tions of thought. Quite as necessary is it that all holy 
principle should have a varied exercise—now in one 
duty, now in another ; now in public aims and efforts, 
now in bosom struggles; now in social methods, now 
in those which are solitary and private; now in high 
emotion, now in deliberative thought and study. Ac¬ 
cordingly the Christian church began with a scene of 
extraordinary social demonstration, and the like, in one 
form or another, may be traced in every period of its 
history since that day. 

But the difficulty is with us that we idolize such 
scenes, and make them the whole of our religion. We 
assume that nothing good is doing, or can be done at 
any other time. And what. is even worse, we often 
look upon these scenes, and desire them, rather as 
scenes of victory, than of piety. They are the harvest- 
times of conversion, and conversion is too nearly every 
thing with us. In particular we see no way to gather 
in disciples, save by means of certain marked experi¬ 
ences, developed in such scenes, in adult years. Our 
very children can possibly come to no good, save in 
thk way. Instrumentalities are invented to compass 
our object, that are only mechanical, and the hope of 
mere present effect is supposed to justify them. Present 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 61 

effect, in the view of many, justifies any thing and every 
thing. We strain every nerve of motion, exhaust 
every capacity of endurance, and push on till nature 
sinks in exhaustion. We preach too much, and live 
Christ too little. We do many things which, in a 
cooler mood, are seen to hurt the dignity of religion, 
and which somewhat shame and sicken ourselves. 
Hence the present state of religion in our country. 
We have worked a vein till it has run out. The 
churches are exhausted.* There is little to attract 
them, when they look upon the renewal of scenes 
through which many of them have passed. They look 
about them, with a sigh, to ask if possibly there is no 
better way, and some are ready to find that better way, 
in a change of their religion. Nothing different from 
this ought to have been expected. No nation can long 
thrive by a spirit of conquest; no more can a church. 
There must be an internal growth, that is made by holy 
industry, in the common walks of life and duty. 

Let us turn now, not away from revivals of religion, 
certainly not away from the conviction that God will 
bring upon the churches tides of spiritual exercise, and 
vary his divine culture by times and seasons suited to 
their advancement; but let us turn to inquire whether 
there is not a fund of increase in the very bosom of the 
church itself. Let us try if we may not train up our 
children in the way that they should go. Simply this, if 
we can do it, will make the church multiply her numbers 


* This was written, I believe, in the year, A. D., 1846. 

6 



62 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

many fold more rapidly than now, with the advantage 
that many more will be gained from without than now. 
For she will cease to hold a mere piety of occasions, a 
piety whose chief use is to get up occasions; she will 
follow a gentler and more constant method, as her duty 
is more constant, and blends with the very life of her 
natural affections. Her piety will be of a more even 
and genial quality, and will be more respected. She 
will not strive and cry, but she will live. The school 
of John the Baptist will be succeeded by the school of 
Christ, as a dew comes after a fire. Families will not 
be a temptation to you, half the time hurrying you on 
to get money, and prepare a show, and the other half, a 
motive to repentance and shame, and profitless exhorta¬ 
tion ; but all the time, an argument for Christian love 
and holy living. 

Then also the piety of the coming age will be deeper, 
and more akin to habit than ours, because it begun 
earlier. It will have more of an air of naturalness, and 
will be less a work of will. A generation will come 
forward, who will have been educated to all good un¬ 
dertakings and enterprises—ardent without fanaticism, 
powerful without machinery. Hot born, so generally, 
in a storm, and brought to Christ by an abrupt transi¬ 
tion, the latter portion of life will not have an unequal 
war to maintain with the beginning, but life will be 
more nearly one, and in harmony with itself. Is not 
this a result to be desired ? Could we tell our Ameri¬ 
can churches, at this moment, what they want, should 
we not tell them this ? Neither, if God, as many fear, 


WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 63 

is about to bring upon bis cburcb a day of wrath and 
stormy conflict, let any one suspect that such a kind of 
piety will want vigor and nerve to withstand the fiery 
assaults anticipated. See what turn the mind of our 
apostle took when he was arming his disciples for the 
great conflict of their age. Children, obey your parents 
—Fathers, provoke not your children—Servants, be 
obedient to your masters—Masters, forbear threaten¬ 
ing—Finally, to include all, put on the whole armor 
of God. As if the first thought, in arming the church 
for great trials and stout victories, was to fill common 
life and the relations of the house with a Christian 
spirit. There is no truer truth, or more sublime. Re¬ 
ligion never thoroughly penetrates life, till it becomes 
domestic. Like that patriotic fire which makes a nation 
invincible, it never burns with inextinguishable devo¬ 
tion till it burns at the hearth. 

4. Parents who are not religious in their character, 
have reason, in our subject, seriously to consider what 
effect they are producing, and likely to produce, in 
their children. Probably you do not wish them to be 
irreligious ; few parents have the hardihood or indiscre¬ 
tion to desire that the fear of God, the salutary restraints 
of religion, should be removed from their children. 
Possibly you exert yourselves, in a degree to give 
them religious council and instruction. But, alas! 
how difficult is it for you to convince them, by words, 
of the value of what you practically reject yourselves. 
Have I not shown you that they are set in organic con¬ 
nection with you, to draw their spirit, and principles, 


64 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 

and character from yours ? What then are they daily 
deriving from you, but that which you yourselves 
reveal, in your prayerless house, and at your thankless 
table ? Is it a spirit of duty and Christian love, a faith 
that has its home and rest in other worlds, or is it the 
carnal spirit of gain, indifference to God, deadness to 
Christ, love of the world, pride, ambition, all that is 
earthly, nothing that is heavenly ? . 

Do not imagine that you have done corrupting them 
when they are born. Their character is yet to be born, 
and, in you, is to have its parentage. Your spirit is to 
pass into them, by a law of transition that is natural, 
and well nigh irresistible. And then you are to meet 
them in a future life, and see how much of blessing or 
of sorrow they will impute to you—to share their un¬ 
known future, and look upon yourselves as father and 
mother to their destiny. Such thoughts, I know, are 
difficult for you to meet; difficult because they open 
real scenes, which you are, one day, to look upon. 
Loving these your children, as most assuredty you 
do, can you think that you are fulfilling the office that 
your love requires ? Go home to your Christless house, 
look upon them all as they gather round you, and ask 
it of your love faithfully to say, whether it is well 
between you? And if no other argument can draw 
you to God, let these dear living arguments come into 
your soul, and prevail there. 


III. 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 

“ The daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in tb« 
■wilderness .”—Samuel iv. 3. 

I cite this comparison for the sake of the compari¬ 
son itself, and not to make an example of the mothers 
of Israel represented in it. They are not to be blamed, 
if, in the terrors of the siege and the wild feverings of 
starvation, the voice of nature has been stifled in their 
bosom. Indeed, it is the wonder of the prophet him¬ 
self that, while the coarse sea-monsters draw out the 
breast and faithfully nurse their young, the human 
mother, so much tenderer and -more loving, can be so 
maddened by distress as to become like the ostrich, and 
forget the cries of her children. 

The ostrich, it will be observed, is nature’s type of 
all unmotherhood. She hatches her young without in¬ 
cubation, depositing her eggs in the sand to be quick¬ 
ened by the solar heat. Her office as a mother-bird is 
there ended. When the young are hatched, they are to 
go forth untended, or unmothered, save by the general 
motherhood of nature itself. Hence the ostrich is 
called sometimes the “wicked,” and sometimes the 
“stupid” bird. Job describes her with a feeling of 
natural dislike—“ Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, 
6 * 


66 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the 
foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break 
them. She is hardened against her young ones, as 
though they were not hers, her labor is in vain without 
care, [in our version, “without fear.”] Because God 
hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted 
unto her understanding.” In other words, she is both 
heartless and senseless; too heartless to care for her 
young, and too senseless to maintain a motherhood as 
genial even as that of the sand. 

Now there is no human mother, unless it be in some 
terrible stress of siege and starvation, when the mind 
itself is unsettled by the wild instigation of suffering, 
who will cease from the bodily care and feeding of her 
children. And yet there are many forms of nurture for 
the mind and character of children, that are so far 
resembled to the ostrich nurture, as to be fitly repre¬ 
sented under that type. Practices are adopted, opin¬ 
ions accepted, theories of church life and conversion 
taught, that make a true Christian parentage virtually 
impossible, and leave the child, in fact, to a kind of 
nurture in the sands. 

What I propose, accordingly, at the present time, is 
to characterize these modes of ostrich nurture, mis¬ 
called Christian, showing what they are, and the real, 
though doubtless undesigned, cruelty of them. 

As a curious illustration of the looseness and the un¬ 
settled feeling of the times, in regard to this great sub- 
iect, it is just now beginning to be asserted by some, 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 67 

that tbs true principle of training for children is ex¬ 
actly that of the ostrich, viz: no training at all; the 
best government, no government. All endeavors to 
fashion them by the parental standards, or to induct 
them into the belief of their parents, is alleged to be a 
real oppression put upon their natural liberty. It is 
nothing less, it is said, than an effort to fill them with 
prejudices, and put them under the sway of prejudices, 
all their lives long. Why not let the child have his 
own way, think his own thoughts, generate his own 
principles, and so be developed in the freedom and 
beauty of the flowers ? Or, if he should sometimes fall 
into bad tempers and disgraceful or uncomely practices, 
as flowers do not, let him learn how to correct himself, 
and be righted by his own discoveries. Having thus 
no artificial conscience 'formed to hamper his natural 
freedom, no religious scruples and superstitions incul¬ 
cated to be a detention, or limitation, upon his impulses, 
he will grow up as a genuine character, stunted by no 
cant or affectation; a large-minded, liberal, original, and 
beautiful soul. 

This kind of nurture supposes, evidently, a faith in 
human nature that is total and complete. As the 
mother ostrich might be supposed to reason, that her 
eggs are ostrich’s eggs, and must therefore produce 
genuine ostriches and nothing else, so it assumes that 
human children will grow up, left to themselves, into 
the most genuine, highest style of human character. 
Whereas, it is the misery of human children that, as 
free beings, answerable for their choices and their char- 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


acter, and already touched with evil, they require some 
training, oyer and above the mere indulgence of their 
natural instincts. They can not be left to merely blos¬ 
som into character; or, if they are, it will most assur¬ 
edly be any sort of character but that which parental 
love would desire. What they most especially want is, 
what no ostrich or mere animal nurture can give; to be 
preoccupied with holy principles and laws; to have pre¬ 
judices instilled that are holy prejudices; and so to be 
tempered beforehand by moderating and guiding influ¬ 
ences, such as their perilous freedom and hereditary 
damage require. 

The question here at issue does not really need to be 
discussed, but it will greatly instruct and impress those 
parents who allow their minds to fluctuate in such 
looseness as quite unsettles the feeling of their obliga¬ 
tion, just to notice the immense distinction between the 
relationship of human parents to their offspring, and 
that of the animals to theirs. It is not given to the ani¬ 
mals, they will perceive, as to men, to pass any results 
matured by their own experience, to their posterity. 
They prepare no inventions, create no institutions 
for their offspring; produce no sciences, write no his¬ 
tories, preserve no records, accumulate no property or 
wealth that is to be transmitted; even their thoughts 
they can perpetuate in no literary treasures. Hence, 
there is no progress among them, over and above that 
small physiological improvement that may pass by the 
laws of natural propagation. So far they are all 
ostriches. All they can do is to follow their instincts. 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


69 


and leave their posterity to follow them over again, in 
the same manner, beginning at the same point. But 
with men, as creatures of reason, it is far otherwise. 
They are creators, all, for them that are to come after. 
What they can discover, build, produce, acquire, learn, 
think, enjoy, they are to transmit; giving it to them 
that come after to begin at the point where they cease, 
and have the full advantage of their opinions, works, 
and character. One of their first duties, therefore, is 
to educate and train their offspring, transmitting to 
them what they have known, believed, and proved by 
their experience. If they sometimes transmit their low 
thoughts, and narrow opinions, and mistaken principles, 
and so far give their children a great disadvantage, that 
is but a necessary evil which is incidental manifestly to 
a system otherwise beneficent, and for that they are of 
course responsible. If nothing were to pass but mere 
instincts, the disadvantage would be far greater, and the 
whole scale of existence lower. How unnatural and 
monstrous, therefore, is that scheme of nurture which 
requires it of parents to pass nothing, or as little as pos¬ 
sible, to their children.. If they have learned wisdom, 
they are not to inculcate that wisdom, lest it should 
create a prejudice! If they have found their conscience 
and the principles of virtue, to be their truest friends 
and the best guardians of their life, they are not to ham¬ 
per their children by subjecting them to the same ! If 
they have found the principal joys that freshen life in 
God and the faith of his Son, they are still to let their 
children find their own sources of strength and joy for 


70 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


themselves, and not to train them, or indoctrinate them 
in such ways of blessing, lest perchance they be not 
sufficiently original and free in their development! 
Why, if they were to discover mines and hide the 
discovery forever, or acquire immense treasures of 
property appointing them by their will to be sunk 
in the sea, leaving their children in utter destitution, 
they would not be as false to their office of parent¬ 
age ! God has given it to them, as rational creatures, 
to transmit all possible benefits to their offspring. And 
what shall they more carefully transmit than what is 
valuable above every thing else, their principles and 
their piety ? 

We find, then, a most solid ground for the obligations 
of Christian nurture. It is one of the grand distinc¬ 
tions of humanity that it has such a power to pass, and 
is set in such a duty of passing, its gifts, principles, and 
virtues, on to the ages that come after. Happily, few 
will need to be convinced of this; and yet there are a 
great many, we shall find, who manage, even under 
what they regard as truly Christian pretexts, to main¬ 
tain schemes of nurture so nearly unparental and un¬ 
natural, as to have a much closer affinity with the 
ostrich nurture than they suspect themselves. 

We have many, for example, who have taken up 
notions of liberty, or free moral agency, in religion, 
that separate them effectually from the true sense of 
their power and privilege in regard to their children. 
Assuming the unquestionable first truth that religious 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


71 


virtue, or piety, is a matter strictly personal, the free¬ 
will offering of obedience and duty to God, they sub¬ 
side into the impression that they are of course absolved 
from any close responsibility for that which lies so en¬ 
tirely in the choices of their children themselves. They 
may not take their absolution by any formal inference, 
and may not even be aware that they have taken it at 
all; but the distinction between manhood and child¬ 
hood is so far hidden, or slurred over, under their 
supposed principle of responsibility grounded in free 
agency, that their self-indulgence is accommodated, by 
the pretext, more easily than they know. Sometimes 
the inference will be half uttered in their feeling; as 
when they ask, only not aloud—“ after all, must not our 
children answer for themselves ?” So they submit re¬ 
signedly, to the supposed necessity, and do it with so 
much less of compunction, because they consciously 
have so tender a feeling for their children, and are so 
much pained by the sense of their religious perils. But 
the submission they fall into, in this pious way, amounts, 
in fact, to a real absolution, not seldom, from all the 
finest, tenderest, most faithful, most unworldly cares of 
their parental office. They subside thus into a habit of 
remissness and religious negligence, and their way of nur¬ 
ture becomes unparental even as that of the ostriches. 

Their blame in such defections from duty is greater 
than they know. For God has probably instituted the 
reproductive order of existence, including the parental 
and filial relation, with a special design to mitigate the 
perils of free agency. One generation is to be ripe in 


72 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


knowledge and character, and the next is to be put in 
charge of the former, in the tenderest, most flexible, 
most dependent state possible, to be by them inducted 
into the choices where their safety lies. Furthermore, 
they are bound to fidelity in their charge, by the fact, 
that, as they have given existence to the subjects of it, 
so they have also communicated the poison of their 
own fallen state, to increase the perils of existence. In 
this manner, God has put it upon them to be the more 
strenuous in their charge, because of these perils, and 
expects, by means of their fidelity, to reduce the other¬ 
wise disastrous results of free agency to the smallest 
possible measure. Their responsibility in the parental 
office is not diminished, but increased even a hundred 
fold, by the personal liberty and strict individuality of 
their children. It would, be far less cruel to be negli¬ 
gent of their bodily wants; for the body will maintain 
its growth, and will even manage to increase in robust¬ 
ness, when it is poorly clad and fed upon the coarsest 
fare. But the mind, or soul, born to greater perils than 
want or the weather, even the tremendous perils of un¬ 
taught liberty, and principles unfixed, waits, at the 
point of its magnificent infancy, to be led into the 
choices, tastes, affinities, and habits, that are to be the 
character of its eternity. Tenderness every where else, 
and remissness here, is only the mockery of kindness. 
Let the first want be first, and the highest nature have 
the promptest care; and if any thing is left to the nur¬ 
ture of the sands, let it be the body, where the crime of 
the desertion will be less and will certainly not be hid. 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 73 

Many true Christians, again, fall off, unwittingly, 
from the humanly parental modes of nurture, in taking 
up notions of conversion that are mechanical, anf' 
proper only to the adult age. They make a merit of 
great persistency and firmness, in asserting the univer¬ 
sal necessity of a new spiritual birth; not perceiving 
under what varieties of form that change may be 
wrought. The soul must be exercised, they think, in 
one given way, viz: by a struggle with sin, a conscious 
self-renunciation, and a true turning to Christ for mercy, 
followed by the joy and peace of a new life in the 
Spirit. A child, in other words, can be born of God 
only in the same way as an adult can be. There is 
no quickening grace, or new creation of the Spirit, 
proper to him as a child. If he dies in infancy, God 
may, it is true, find some way, possibly, to save him, 
but if he stays among the living, he can not be a 
Christian till he is older. He is therefore left, in this 
most tender and beautiful and pliant age, in a condition 
most of all unprivileged, and most sadly unhopeful. 
The necessity of a great spiritual change is upon him, 
and yet he is wholly incapable of the change! What 
other being has the good Lord and Father of the world 
left in a condition as pitiful as this of a human child ? 
Even the most wicked and hardened of men has, at 
least, the gate of conversion left open. And yet there 
are many Christian parents, living an outwardly decent 
and fair life, who consent, without difficulty, and with 
a kind of consciously orthodox merit, to this very un¬ 
natural and truly hard lot of childhood, and fall into 

7 


74 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


easy conformity with it. Their practically accepted 
notion of Christian nurture, in which they mean to be 
piously faithful is, that they are to bring up their chil¬ 
dren outside of all possible acceptance with God, till 
such time as their conversion may be looked for in a 
church-wise form. And their whole scheme of treat¬ 
ment corresponds. They indoctrinate them soundly in 
respect to their need of a new heart; tell them what 
conversion is, and how it comes to pass with grown 
people; pray that God will arrest them when they are 
old enough to be converted according to the manner; 
drill them, meantime, into all the constraints, separated 
from all the hopes and liberties of religion ; turning all 
their little misdoings and bad tempers into evidences 
of their need of regeneration, and assuring them that 
all such signs must be upon them till after they have 
passed the change. Their nurture is a nurture, thus, of 
despair; and the bread of life itself, held before them 
as a fruit to be looked upon, but not tasted, till they 
are old enough to have it as grown people do, 
finally becomes repulsive, just because they have been 
so long repelled and fenced away from it. And so relig¬ 
ion itself, pressed down upon them till they are fatally 
sored by its impossible claims, becomes their fixed 
aversion. How plain is it that such kind of nurture is 
unnatural and, though it be not so intended, unchris¬ 
tian. It makes even the loving gospel of Jesus a most 
galling chain upon the neck of childhood!—this and 
nothing more. For so long a time, and that the most 
ductile and hopeful, as regards all new implantings of 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 75 

good, it really proposes nothing but to have the depra- 
vated nature grow, and the plague of sin deepen its bad 
infection. 

Meantime, it will be strange, if the parents them¬ 
selves do not fall away from all that is necessary to 
their Christian power, when the conversion of their 
children is postponed, in this manner, by the merely 
adult possibilities of their gospel. Why should they 
live so as to gain their children, when their children 
are not to be gained? Were they really to live so as 
to make their house an element of grace, the atmos¬ 
phere of their life an element, to all that breathe it, of 
unworldly feeling and all godly aspiration, their me¬ 
chanical doctrine of conversion would scarcely suffice to 
keep away the saving mercies of God from their chil¬ 
dren. Their children would still be converted even 
before the permissible time, and burst up through the 
poor detentions of their bad do ctrine, to cover it with 
blessed confusion. But alas! it requires but a very 
little of genuine, living godliness in the house, to bring 
up children for a future conversion ! This kind of os¬ 
trich nurture can be cheaply maintained, and with a 
very small expenditure of piety. To keep the drill on 
foot, as a mere legal indoctrination; to phrase a hope 
or desire of conversion, in the family prayers; to be 
exact, stern, stiff in all church practices, requires no 
faith; or living by faith, no sanctification of the life. 
A busy, worldly, hard-natured father, a vain, irritable, 
captious, fashion-loving mother, a house orthodoxly 
bad and earthly in all the reigning practices, is yet a 


78 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


good enough school to prepare the necessity of a future 
conversion for the children! How different the kind 
of life that is necessary to bring them up in conversion 
and beget them anew in the spirit of a loving obedience 
to God, at a point even prior to all definite recollection. 
This is Christian nurture, because it nurtures Christians, 
and because it makes an element of Christian grace in 
the house. It invites, it nourishes hope, it breathes in 
love, it forms the new life as a holy, though beautiful 
prejudice in the soul, before its opening and full flower¬ 
ing of intelligence arrives. “ Suffer little children to 
come unto me and forbid them not” translates the very 
economy of the house, and has, in that economy, its 
living verification. And the promise, “for of such is 
the kingdom of heaven,” wears no look of violence; 
for the kingdom of heaven is there. The children grow 
up in it, as being configured to it. The family prayers 
have a sound of gladness, and they sing the family 
hymn with glad voices. The worldliness of the glitter¬ 
ing bad world without is set off and made fascinating 
by no doom of repression within. A firm administra¬ 
tion is loved because, like God’s, it is felt to be the de¬ 
fense of liberty. Truth, purity, firmness, love to Jesus, 
all that belongs to a formal conversion and more, is 
centralized thus in the soul, as a kind of ingrown habit. 
The children are all converted by the converting ele¬ 
ment of grace they live in. And so it is proved that 
there is a conversion for children, proper and possible 
to their age. They are not excluded, walled away from 
Christ by a mechanical enforcement of modes proper 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 77 

only and possible to adults. The house itself is a con¬ 
verting ordinance. 

Again there is another and different way in which 
parents, meaning to be Christian, fall into the ostrich 
nurture without being at all aware of it. They be¬ 
lieve in what are called revivals of religion, and have 
a great opinion of them as being, in a very special sense, 
the converting times of the gospel. They bring up 
their children, therefore, not for conversion exactly, but, 
what is less dogmatic and formal, for the converting 
times. And this they think is even more evangelical 
and spiritual because it is more practical; though, in 
fact, much looser and connected, commonly, with even 
greater defections from parental duty and fidelity. To 
bring up a family for revivals of religion requires, alas ! 
about the smallest possible amount of consistency and 
Christian assiduity. No matter what opinion may be 
held of such times, or of their inherent value and pro¬ 
priety as pertaining to the genuine economy of the 
gospel, any one can see that Christian parents may very 
easily roll off a great part of their responsibilities, and 
comfort themselves in utter vanity and worldliness of 
life, by just holding it as a principal hope for their chil¬ 
dren, that they are to be finally taken up and rescued 
from sin, by revivals of religion. As it costs much to 
be steadily and uniformly spiritual, how agreeable the 
hope that gales of the Spirit will come to make amends 
for their conscious defections. If they do not maintain 
the unworldly and heavenly spirit, so as to make it the 
7 * 


78 


THE OSTRICH NURTUKA 


element of life in their house, God will some time have 
his day of power in the community, and they piously 
nope that their children will then be converted to 
Christ. So they fall into a key of expectation that per¬ 
mits, for the present, modes of life and conduct, which 
they can not quite approve. They go after the world 
with an eagerness which they expect by and by t< 
check, or possibly, for the time, to repent of. The 
family prayers grow cold and formal, and are often in¬ 
termitted. The tempers are earthly, coarse, violent. 
Discipline is ministered in anger, not in love. The 
children are lectured, scolded, scorched by fiery words. 
The plans are all for money, show, position, not for the 
more sacred and higher interests of character. The 
conversation is uncharitable, harsh, malignant, an effu¬ 
sion of spleen, a tirade, a taking down of supposed 
worth and character by low imputations and carping 
criticisms. In this kind of element the children are to 
have their growth and nurture, but the parents piously 
hope that there will some time be a revival of religion, 
and that so God will mercifully make up what they 
conceive to be only the natural infirmity of their lives. 
Finally the hoped for day arrives, and there begins to 
be a remarkable and strange piety in the house. 
The father choakes almost in his prayer, showing that 
he really prays with a meaning! The mother, con¬ 
scious that things have not been going rightly with the 
children, and seeing many frightful signs of their cer¬ 
tain ruin at hand, warns them, even weeping, of the 
impending dangers by which she is so greatly distressed 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


79 


on their account; adding also bitter confessions of fault 
in herself. The children stare of course, not knowing 
what strange thing has come I They can not be unaf¬ 
fected ; perhaps they seem to be converted, perhaps not. 
In many cases it makes little difference which; for if all 
this new piety in the house is to burn out in a few days, 
and the old regimen of worldliness and sin to return, 
it will be wonderful if they are not converted back 
again to be only just as neglectful, in the matter of 
Christian living, as they were brought up to be. Any 
scheme of nurture that brings up children thus for revi¬ 
vals of religion, is a virtual abuse and cruelty. And 
it is none the less cruel that some pious-looking pretexts 
are cunningly blended with it. Instead of that steady, 
formative, new-creating power that ought to be exerted 
by holiness in the house, it looks to campaigns of force 
that really dispense with holiness, and it results that all 
the best ends of Christian nurture are practically lost. 

Again, there is another form of the unchristian nur¬ 
ture, over opposite to these just named, which is quite 
as wide of the true character. I speak of that lower and 
merely ethical nurture, which undertakes, with great 
assiduity it may be, to form and whittle the age of 
childhood into character, by a merely pruning and hu¬ 
manly culturing process. It is a kind of nurture that 
stops short of religion, and atones for the conscious 
defect, by a drill more or less careful in the moralities. 
The reason of this defect commonly is that the parents 
are too far decayed in piety and too much under the 


80 THE OSTKICH NURTUEE. 

world, to put forth any really religious endeavor; but 
it is to their children as if no such interest of religion 
had existence. They are corrected on this side and on 
that, by human standards and methods, taught to con¬ 
sider what is respectable, or what people will think of 
them, how to win the honors of character among men, 
lectured on the wisdom of conduct, and the resulting 
happiness of a right behavior, but the fact of their rela¬ 
tion to God, and the standards and motives furnished 
by religion are wholly passed by, or omitted. The 
cruelty of this sort of nurture is that, however delicate 
and careful it may be of that which lies in mere social 
character and standing, it exactly copies the ostrich 
nurture in all that relates to the higher and properly 
religious life. The world-ward nature is cared for, but 
the religious, that which opens God-ward, that which 
aspires after God, and, occupied by his inspiring im¬ 
pulse, mounts into all good character, as being even 
liberty itself; that which consummates and crowns the 
real greatness and future eternity of souls, is virtually 
ignored, left to the wild, dry, motherhood of the 
sands. 

Children trained in this mere ethical nurture, are in¬ 
ducted into no way of faith or dependence on God. 
They are taught to look for no spiritual transformation. 
The virtue they practice is to be prayerless virtue. 
They grow up thus on the roots of their natural pride 
and selfishness, bred into the habit of testing their good¬ 
ness by their appearances, and their merit by their 
works. That they should be molded in this manner to 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


81 


a Christian life would be wonderful. Their parents 
may be nominally Christian, but they have, in fact, 
agreed to omit religion in the training of their children; 
and it would be strange if they should compliment their 
only nominally Christian parentage, by unfolding a 
really Christian life. It will be well if they have any 
genuine respect for religion, or even sense of what it is. 
Trained to have no religious conscience, and to prac¬ 
tice a virtue unblessed by the nobler impulsions of relig¬ 
ious inspiration, it will be strange if they maintain 
even correctness of life; and more so if their heart, un¬ 
developed by religion, does not canker itself away in 
the sordid vices of meanness, or burn itself out, as re¬ 
gards all worthy and great feelings, in the general hatred 
of God and his truth. There may be many decencies, or 
even delicacies, in this kind of nurture ; and yet, in the 
complete oversight or neglect of the religious nature, it 
becomes profoundly and even cruelly unnatural. 

There is yet another and widely prevalent miscon¬ 
ception of childhood which, to a certain extent, involves 
Christianity itself in the same unnatural methods that 
are adopted by men. I speak here more especially of 
the assumed fact that Christ allows no place in the church 
for such as are only children. Is not the church to be 
composed of such as really believe ? And what kind 
of faith can children have who are not yet arrived at 
the age of intelligence ? Hence there is supposed to 
be a kind of necessity that children, up to that period 
of advancement and personal maturity when they are 


82 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


able to cboose and believe for themselves, and become 
the subjects of a genuine Christian experience, should 
be excluded from the Christian church. It signifies 
nothing that the seal of faith was anciently applied to 
children only eight days old, as being presumptively in 
the faith of their parents, and included with them in 
the bonds of their covenant. As little does it signify 
that Christ says “ let them come, forbid them not; for 
of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Still they can not 
believe—are not old enough to believe—how then can 
they come into the church, or in any conceivable way 
be included in it ? Is not the church of God assumed 
to be made up of them that believe ? What then is 
left for children but to stay without till they are old 
enough to be intelligently converted, and entered into a 
new life by their own deliberate choice ? Hence the 
Baptist brethren conceive it to be a matter perfectly 
final, as regards the question of baptism, that infants 
can not believe, and can not therefore have any fit place 
among believers in the church. Does not the Scriptuie 
say—“ Believe and be baptized ?” And how is confes¬ 
sion to be made with the mouth, except when the heart 
believeth unto righteousness ? 

The result of such arguments and inferences is, that 
children have no place given them in the church, how¬ 
ever modified, to suit the conditions of their age. Their 
parents are called by Christ to live within and they 
themselves are left without. There is no church nur¬ 
ture for them proper to their tender years; they can not 
be in the church till they are sufficiently grown to be- 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


83 


lieve. And so it is settled that there is no church mercy 
for them. The church turns her back and leaves them, 
separated even from their parents, to try their fortunes, 
like the wild ostriches, in the desert sands without. 

It would seem that the hardness and the monstrous 
unnaturalness of such conceptions must revolt the mind 
of almost any thoughtful person. If the grace of our 
salvation took the ingenuous children away from their 
sinning, unbelieving parents, and gathered them into 
the heavenly fold by themselves, we should have less 
reason to be shocked by the severity. But instead of 
this, calling home the penitent fathers and mothers and 
carefully folding them in the church of God’s protec¬ 
tion, Jesus their shepherd shuts away the lambs, we 
are told, and forbids them to come in! The cruelty of 
such an opinion, or doctrine, is evident, and the cruel 
effects it must have, in making even childhood feel 
itself to be an alien from God’s mercies, are even more 
so. It has no conception that there can be a Saviour 
and salvation for all ages and stages of life; Christ is 
the Saviour of adults only! No! Christ is a Saviour 
bounded by no such narrow and meager theories—a 
Saviour for infants, and children, and youth, as truly as 
for the adult age; gathering them all into his fold 
together, there to be kept and nourished together, by 
gifts appropriate to their years; even as he himself has 
shown us so convincingly, by passing through all ages 
and stages of life himself, and giving us, in that manner, 
to see that he partakes the want and joins himself to 
the fallen state of each. Having been a child himselfj 


84 


THE OSTEICH NURTURE. 


■who can imagine, even for one moment, tliat he has no 
place in his fold for the fit reception of childhood? 
Dreadful insult, both to him and to childhood, and the 
greater insult, that the gospel even of heaven’s love is 
narrowed to this, by a supposed necessity of evangel¬ 
ism ! What a position is given thus to children, grow¬ 
ing up to look on an adult church, instructed into the 
opinion that what they look npon—Christ, ordinances, 
covenant vows—is only for adult people! 

I ought perhaps to add, in bringing this argument to 
a close, that the harsh imputations I may seem to some 
of you to have indulged, must not be hastily disallowed. 
Almost all parents are tender, consciously tender of 
their children. What will not most of you do, to clothe 
and feed, and educate, and, in all respects, make due 
provision for your children ? Sacrifices here are noth¬ 
ing. Health, rest, ease, comfort, you gladly renounce 
for their sake, and some of you would not spare the 
sacrifice even of your soul to serve them. Are you 
then to be justly charged with a mode of nurture so 
unnatural as to be fitly resembled to that of the os¬ 
triches ? Of what are you more deeply conscious than 
of your willingness even to die for your children. All 
your tenderest movings are toward them; all that you 
plan, or think, or do, is for them. Yes, doubtless, it is 
even so, as regards their nurture and comfort in this 
world—all your tenderest cares and studies center here. 
Of this there is no question, and far be it from me to 
suggest a doubt of you here. 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


85 


No, this defection from nature, of which I have been 
speaking, relates to a different matter—in quite another 
field. Doing jour full honor as a careful provider, a 
most faithful and loving guardian, a disinterested, self- 
sacrificing contriver and laborer for jour children’s 
good, the question is whether jou do not after all pufc 
them off with a mere ostrich nurture in the matter of 
the soul ? whether jou do not let in some one or 
more of these verj misconceptions I have named, to 
control all jour modes of conduct and discipline to¬ 
ward them ? Do jou never throw off jour own Chris¬ 
tian responsibilities for them bj allowing, as a pretext, 
the fact of their libertj and personal responsibilitj for 
themselves ? Are jou never let down in the sense of 
jour most sacred obligations, bj simplj allowing jour- 
self to think it enough, that jour children are brought 
up for conversion ? Do none of jou subside even to a 
lower point, and bring up jour children onlj for revi¬ 
vals of religion ? Are there none of jou that make it 
jour whole care to form jour children bj the mere 
ethical standards, and finish them in the graces of 
mere human culture ? Have none of jou theories o 
salvation and of Christ’s waj respecting it, such as leave 
no place for children in the church, however qualified 
to meet their age ? Little now does it signify that jou 
love jour children, or do even slave both bodj and 
mind to get a footing of society and comfort for them 
in this life—even beavers and bears will do as much as 
that. In giving existence to jour child jou have set 
him forth into perils that include his immortality, and 
8 


86 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


you have therefore no right to handle him neglectfully 
in this great concern. On the contrary, you are to accept 
his immortality, and in a seriously Christian sense, 
take it on yourself, as being in Christ’s name responsi¬ 
ble for it; responsible, that is, for making your house 
itself such an element of piety, love, faith, unworldly 
and beautiful living, that your children shall grow up 
in it, as in the nurture of the Lord. Take no credit to 
yourselves for any thing which falls short of this. 
You may be very tender in what falls short, but it is 
no Christian tenderness. You can not live in a worldly 
house, you can not make yourself a family drudge to 
serve a mere family ambition, can not piously hope that 
God will somehow convert your children after they 
have got by you and become adults, without being 
justly chargeable with giving their souls a mere nur¬ 
ture of the sands, in which the genuine Christian grace 
has no part whatever. And be not surprised if these 
children when they meet you before the Judge of your 
and their life, have a more severe witness to give against 
you than if you had merely neglected their bodies. 

Probably enough there may be some of you that, 
without being Christians yourselves, are yet careful to 
teach your children all the saving truths of religion, 
and who thus may take it as undue severity to be 
charged with only giving your children this unnatural, 
ostrich nurture of which I have spoken. But how 
poor a teacher of Christ is any one who is not in the 
light of Christ, and does not know the inward power 
of his truth, as a gospel of life to the soul. You 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


87 


press your child, in this manner, with duties you 
do not practice, and promises you do not embrace; 
and if you do not succeed, it only means that you can 
not impose on him to that high extent. A mother 
teach by words only? No! but more, a great deal 
more by the atmosphere of love and patience she 
breathes. Besides, how easy is it for her to make every 
thing she teaches legal and repulsive, just because 
she has no liberty or joy in it herself. What is wanted 
therefore is not merely to give a child the law, telling 
him this is duty, this is right, this God requires, this he 
will punish, but a much greater want is to have the 
spirit of all duty lived and breathed around him; to 
gee, and feel, and breathe, himself, the living atmos¬ 
phere of grace. Therefore it is vain, let all parents so 
understand, to imagine that you can really fulfill the 
true fatherhood and motherhood, unless you are true 
Christians yourselves. I am sorry to discourage you 
in any good attempts. Rightly taken, what I say will 
not discourage you, but will only prompt you by all 
that is dearest to you on earth, to become truly quali¬ 
fied for your office. By these dear pledges God has 
given you, to call you to himself, I beseech you turn 
yourselves to the true life of religion. Have it first in 
yourselves, then teach it as you live it; teach it by 
■living it; for you can do it in no other manner. Be 
Christians yourselves, and then it will not be difficult 
for you to do your true duties to your children. Until 
then it is really impossible. 


88 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


I have only to add in the conclusion of this subject- 
just what is made plain by it—that there is really no 
great wonder, in the fact often spoken of as a subject 
of wonder, that Christian parents are so frequently 
disappointed in their children. Why is it that such 
correct and apparently Christian people see their chil¬ 
dren grow up unaffected by religion, or even hostile to 
its sacred claims, falling possibly into a character of 
vice and complete moral abandonment ? The answer 
is, alas! too easy. I will not say that, in every case, 
the result accuses them of crime; it may be the effect 
sometimes of their mistaken, or faulty conceptions of 
parental duty. But no one, it seems to me, can once 
distinguish these bad faults of nurture, and note the 
very wide prevalence they have in the Christian homes, 
without even expecting worse and more fatal results 
of mischief than actually appear. Sometimes it seems 
to be imagined that nothing but some dark hindrance 
of divine sovereignty can account for such results. 
The less we have to say in that strain the wiser we 
shall be, and as much less irreverent to God. No, 
there is reason enough for all such miscarriages without 
charging them to God. I could not express myself as 
the truth requires, my brethren, if I did not say, that 
when I observe the wide-spread delusions of nom¬ 
inally Christian parents, their false aims, their worldly 
pretexts, their habitual separation from any living faith 
in God, in the ends, plans, practices, and spirit of their 
administration, I rather wonder that results a great 
deal worse dc not appear. It would even be a fit 


THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 


89 


subject of wonder, if children trained in this manner, 
should not turn out badly. If indeed they are so much 
as converted afterwards, saying nothing of their grow¬ 
ing up in a sanctified character, it is well—more than 
could be rightly expected. 

No, my friends, these mistaken modes of nurture ought 
not to make Christians; they must even falsify their 
own nature to do it. Let us be just to God, and lay 
our griefs no longer to his charge. If we can not come 
into his way in the training of our families, let us not 
complain that we do not succeed in ways of our own. 
After all, there is no cheap way of making Christians 
jf our children. Nothing but to practically live for it 
makes it sure. To be Christians ourselves—ah ! there 
is the difficulty. How can an unchristian, or only non- 
christian spirit reigning in the house, quicken the spirit 
of life and holiness in the hearts subjected to its sway ? 
Even if our false modes of nurture are mistakes, who 
can expect that mistakes will be as good as verities? 
0, thou, blessed Son of God, advocate and friend of the 
little ones, rid us of our falsities, and set us in thy own 
true spirit, that we may fitly discharge these most 
sacred and' tenderest duties! 

8 * 


IV. 


TIIE ORGANIC UNITY OF THE FAMILY. 

“ The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and th< 
women knead dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pou 
out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.’ 
—Jeremiah vii. 18. 

In this lively picture, you have the illustration of ? 
great and momentous truth —the Organic Unity of the 
Family. If it be an idolatrous family, worshipers of 
the moon, for example, such is the organic relation 
of the members, that they are all involved together, 
and the idol worship is the common act of the house. 
The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, 
the women prepare the cakes for an offering, and the 
queen of heaven receives it, as one that is the joint 
product of the whole family. The worship is family 
worship; the god of one is the god of all; the spirit 
of one, the spirit of all. 

And so it is with all family transactions and feelings. 
They implicate ordinarily the whole circle of the house, 
young and old, male and female, fathers and mothers, 
sons and daughters. Acting thus together, they take 
a common character, accept the same delusions, prac¬ 
tice the same sins, and ought, I believe, to be sanctified 
by a common grace. 

This most serious truth is one that is exceedingly 


THE ORGANIC UNITY. 


91 


remote from the present age, and from no part of the 
Christian world more remote than from ns. All onr 
modern notions and speculations have taken a bent 
toward individualism. In the state, we have been 
engaged to bring out the civil rights of the individual, 
asserting his proper liberties as a person, and vindica¬ 
ting his conscience, as a subject of God, from the 
constraints of force. In matters of religion, we have 
burst the bonds of church authority, and erected the in¬ 
dividual mind into a tribunal of judgment within itself; 
we have asserted free will as the ground of all proper 
responsibility, and framed our theories of religion so as 
to justify the incommunicable nature of persons as 
distinct units. While thus engaged, we have well nigh 
lost, as was to be expected, the idea of organic powers 
and relations. The state, the church, the family, have 
ceased to be regarded as such, according to their proper 
idea, and become mere collections of units. A national 
life, a church life, a family life, is no longer conceived, 
or perhaps conceivable, by many. Instead of being 
wrought in together and penetrated, to some extent, by 
historic laws and forces common to all the members, 
we only seem to lie as seeds piled together, without 
any terms of connection, save the accident of proximity, 
or the fact that we all belong to the heap. And thus 
the three great forms of organic existence, which God 
has appointed for the race, are in fact lost out of mental 
recognition. The conception is so far gone that, when 
the fact of such an organic relation is asserted, our 
enlightened public will stare at the strange conceit, 


92 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


and wonder what can be meant by a paradox so 
absurd. 

My design, at the present time, is to restore, if pos* 
sible, the conception of one of these organic forms, 
viz: the family. For though we have gained immense 
advantages, in a civil, ecclesiastical, and religious point 
of view, by our modern development of individualism, 
we have yet run ourselves into many hurtful misappre¬ 
hensions on all these subjects, which, if they are not 
rectified, will assuredly bring disastrous consequences. 
And no where consequences more disastrous than in 
the family, where they are already apparent, though 
not fully matured; for the very change of view, by 
which we have cleared individual responsibility, in our 
discussions of free will, original sin, and kindred sub¬ 
jects, has operated, in another direction, to diminish 
responsibility, where most especially it needs to be felt; 
that is, in Christian families. 

What then do we mean by the organic unity of the 
family ? It will be understood, of course, that we do 
not speak of a physical or vascular connection; for, after 
birth, there is no such connection existing, any more 
than there is between persons of different families. In 
so far, however, as a connection of parentage, or deriva¬ 
tion has affected the. character, that fact must be in¬ 
cluded, though it can not be regarded as a chief element 
in the unity asserted. Perhaps I shall be understood 
with the greatest facility, if I say that the family is such 
a body, that a power over character is exerted therein, 


OF THE FAMILY. 


93 


which can not 'properly be called influence. We com¬ 
monly use the term influence to denote a persuasive 
power, or a governmental power, exerted purposely, 
and with a conscious design to effect some result in the 
subject. In maintaining the organic unity of the family, 
I mean to assert, that a power is exerted by parents 
over children, not only when they teach, encourage, 
persuade, and govern, but without any purposed control 
whatever. The bond is so intimate that they do it 
unconsciously and undesignedly—they must do it. 
Their character, feelings, spirit, and principles, must 
propagate themselves, whether they will or not. How¬ 
ever, as influence, in the sense just given, can not be 
received by childhood prior to the age of reason and 
deliberative choice, the control of parents, purposely 
exerted, must be regarded, during that early period, as 
an absolute force, not as influence. All such acts 
of control therefore must, in metaphysical propriety, 
and as far as the child is concerned, be classed under 
the general denomination of organic causes. And thus 
whatever power over character is exerted in families 
one side of consent, in the children, and even before 
they have come to the age of rational choice, must be 
taken as organic power, in the same way as if the effect 
accrued under the law of simple contagion. So too 
when the child performs acts of will, under parental 
direction, that involve results of character, without 
knowing or considering that they do, these must be 
classed in the same manner. 

In general, then, we find the organic unity of the 


94 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


family, in every exertion of power over character, 
which is not exerted and received as influence; that i^ 
with a design to address the choice on one side, and a 
sense of responsible choice on the other. Or, to use 
language more popular, we conceive the manners, per¬ 
sonal views, prejudices, practical motives, and spirit 
of the house, as an atmosphere which passes into all 
and pervades all, as naturally as the air they breathe. 
This, however, not in any such absolute or complete 
sense as to leave no room for individual distinctions. 
Sometimes the two parents will have a very different 
spirit themselves, though the grace of God is pledged 
to make the better, if it be truly right, and hindered by 
no gross inconsistencies, victorious. Sometimes the 
child, passing into the sphere of other causes, as in the 
school, the church, neighboring families, or general 
society, will emerge and take a character partially dis¬ 
tinct—partially, I say; never wholly. The odor of the 
house will always be in his garments, and the internal 
difficulties with which he has to struggle, will spring 
of the family seeds planted in his nature. 

Having carefully stated thus what I mean by the 
organic unity of the family, I next proceed to inquire 
whether any such unity exists ? And here it is worth 
noticing— 

1. That there is nothing in this view which conflicts 
with the proper individuality of persons and their 
separate responsibility. We have gained immense ad¬ 
vantages, in modern times, as regards society, govern- 


OF THE FAMILY 


95 


ment, and character, by liberating and exalting the 
individual man. Far be it from me to underrate these 
advantages, or to bring them into jeopardy. But a 
chi\d manifestly can not be a proper individual, before 
he is one. Nothing can be gained by assuming that he 
is; and, if it is not true, much is sure to be lost. Be¬ 
sides, we are never, at any age, so completely individ¬ 
ual as to be clear of organic connections that affect our 
character. To a certain extent and for certain pur¬ 
poses, we are individuals, acting each from his own 
will. Then to a certain extent and for certain other 
purposes, we are parts or members of a common body, 
as truly as the limbs of a tree. We have an open 
side in our nature, where a common feeling enters, 
where we adhere, and through which we are actua¬ 
ted by a common will. There we are many—here we 
are one. 

It is remarkable too how often, without knowing it, 
and, as it were instinctively, we assume the fact, and 
act upon it. We do it, for example, as between na¬ 
tions, where it is not so much the moral life as the 
national that constructs the supposed unity. One na¬ 
tion, for instance, has injured or oppressed another— 
sought to crush, or actually crushed another by inva¬ 
sion. A century or more afterwards, the wrong is 
remembered, and the injured nation takes the field, still 
burning for redress. The history of Carthage and 
Borne gives us an example. But, suppose it had been 
said — u This is very absurd in you Carthaginians. The 
Bomans, who did you the injury, are all dead, and 


90 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


those who now bear the name are their children’s chil¬ 
dren. They have done you no injury any more than 
the people of Britain or India. Neither is it the walls, 
or streets, or temples of Borne that have injured you. 
The Boman territory is mere land, and this has not 
injured you. Why then go to war with the Bomans ? 
How absurd to think of redressing your old injuries by 
a war with men who have done you no harm!” Now, 
it was by just this kind of sophistry that Mr. Jefferson 
proved that a public debt is obligatory for only one 
generation, and possibly the Carthaginians might have 
been speculatively stumbled by such reasonings. Still, 
they could not have been quite satisfied, I think, of 
their validity. Against all speculation, they would 
still have felt that the proposed war was somehow 
reconcilable with reason. The question is not whether, 
on Christian principles, they were right, but whether, on 
natural principles, they were absurd. This probably 
no reader of the history has ever felt. For, whether it 
squares with our speculative notions or not, we do all 
tacitly assume the organic unity of nations. The past 
we behold, living in the present, and all together wo 
regard as one, inhabited by the common life. How 
much more true is this (though in a different way) in 
families, where the common life is so nearly absolute 
over the members; where they are all inclosed within 
the four walls of their dwellings, partakers in a com 
moil blood, in common interests, wants, feelings, and 
principles. 

2. We discover the organic unity of families, in the 


OF THE FAMILY. 


97 


fact that one generation is the natural offspring of an¬ 
other. And so much is there in this, that the children 
almost always betray their origin in their looks and 
features. The stamp of a common nature is on them, 
revealed in the stature, complexion, gait, form, and 
dispositions. Sometimes we seem to see remarkable 
exceptions. But, in such cases, we should commonly 
find, if we could bring up to-view the ancestors of remo¬ 
ter generations, that the family bond is still perpetuated, 
only by a wider reach of connection. There are said to 
be two maiden sisters, the last of a distinguished family, 
now living in England, who, having no resemblance to 
any near , ancestor, have yet a very striking resem¬ 
blance to the portrait, still hanging in the family 
mansion, of an ancestor seven generations back. In¬ 
deed, I have myself distinguished, by their looks, the 
relationship of two persons, connected by a common 
derivation eight generations back, and who more closely 
resembled each other in their persons, than either his 
nearest kindred. So that, in cases where there seems to 
be no transmission of resemblances, there is yet a proba¬ 
ble transmission, only one that is covert and more com¬ 
prehensive. How, strong external resemblances may 
coexist with marked external differences, and therefore 
do not prove a coincidence of character. And yet it 
can not be denied that, as far as they go, they argue a 
transmission of capacities and dispositions, which enter 
into character, as remote causes or occasions. Hor 
does it make any difference, as regards the matter in 
question, whether souls or spiritual natures come into 
9 


98 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


being through propagation, or not. If they are created, 
as some fancy, by the immediate inbreathing of God, 
still they are measured by the house they are to live in, 
and the outward man is, in all cases, a fit organ for the 
person within. The dispositions, tempers, capacities— 
the natural, and, to a great extent, the moral character, 
have the outward frame, as a fit organ of use and ex¬ 
pression. It will even be observed too that, in cases 
where there is a remarkable change of character, it will 
be signified, in due time, by a change of manner, aspect, 
and action. 

Besides, it is well understood that qualities received 
by training, and not in themselves natural, do also pass 
by transmission. It is said, for example, that the dog 
used in hunting was originally trained by great care 
and effort, and that now almost no training is necessary; 
for the artificial quality has become, to a great extent, 
natural in the stock. We have also a most ominous 
example of this fact in the human species. I speak of 
the Jewish race. The singular devotion of this race to 
money and traffic is even a proverb. But their ances¬ 
tors, of the ancient times, were not thus distinguished. 
They were a simple, agricultural people, remarkable 
for nothing but their religious opinions, and, in a late 
period of the commonwealth, for their fanatical heroism 
and obstinacy. Whence the change? History gives 
the mournful answer, showing them to view, for long 
ages, as a hated and down-trodden people, allowed no 
rights in the soil, shut up within some narrow and foul 
precinct in the cities, compelled to subsist by some 


OF THE FAMILY. 


99 


meager traffic, denied every possession but money, and 
suffered to keep in security not even that, save as they 
could hide it in secret places, and cloak the suspicion 
of wealth under a sordid exterior. They have thus 
been educated to be misers by the extortions and the 
hatred of Christendom; till finally an artificial nature, 
so to speak, has been formed in the race, and we take 
it even as the instinct of a Jew, to get money by small 
traffic and sharp bargains. So there is little room to 
doubt that every sort of character and employment 
passes an effect and works some predisposition in those 
who come after. 

Could we enter into the mental habits of those chil¬ 
dren, who are spoken of in my text, and trace out all 
the threads of their inward character and disposition, 
we should doubtless find some color of idolatry in the 
fiber of their very being. They are not such as they 
would be, if their parents, of this and remote genera¬ 
tions, had been worshipers of the true God. Their 
talents, dispositions, propensities are different. The 
idol god is in their faces and their bones, and his stamp 
is on their spirit. Not in such a sense that the sin of 
idolatry is in them—that is inconceivable; for no pro¬ 
per sin can pass by transmission—but that they have a 
vicious, or prejudicial infection from it, a damage accru¬ 
ing from their historical connection and that of their 
progenitors with it. 

Nor, with these familiar laws of physiology before 
us, is it reasonable to doubt that, where there is a long 
line of godly fathers and mothers, kept up in regular 


100 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


succession for many generations, a religious tempera¬ 
ment may at length be produced, that is more in the 
power of conscience, less wayward as regards principles 
of integrity, and more pliant to the Christian motives. 
More could be said with confidence, if the godly 
character were less ambiguous and more thoroughly 
sanctified. 

3, We shall find that theie is a law of connection, 
after birth, under which power over character is ex¬ 
erted, without any design to do it. For a considerable 
time after birth, the child has no capacity of will and 
choice developed, and therefore is not a subject of in¬ 
fluence, in the common sense of that term. He is not 
as yet a complete individual; he has only powers and 
capacities that prepare him to be, when they are un¬ 
folded. They are in him only as wings and a capacity 
to fly are in the egg. Meantime, he is open to impres¬ 
sions from every thing he sees. His character is form¬ 
ing, under a principle, not of choice, but of nurture. 
The spirit of the house is breathed into his nature, day 
by day. The anger and gentleness, the fretfulness and 
patience—the appetites, passions, and manners—all the 
variant moods of feeling exhibited round him, pass into 
him as impressions, and become seeds of character in 
him; not because the parents will, but because it must 
be so, whether they will or not. They propagate their 
own evil in the child, not by design, but under a law 
of moral infection. Before the children begin to gather 
wood for the sacrifice, the spirit of the idol and his 
faith has been communicated. The airs and feelings 


OF THE FAMILY. 


101 


and conduct of idolatry have filled tlieir nature with 
impressions, which are back of all choice and memory. 
Go out to them then, as they are gathering faggots for 
the idol sacrifice, ask them what questions they have had 
about the service of the god? what doubts? whether 
any unsatisfied debate or perplexing struggle has vis¬ 
ited their minds ? and you will probably awaken their 
first thoughts on the subject by the inquiry itself. All 
because they have grown up in the idol worship, from a 
point back of memory. They received it through their 
impressions, before they were able to receive it from 
choice. And so it is with all the moral transactions of 
the house. The spirit of the house is in the members 
by nurture, not by teaching, not by any attempt to com¬ 
municate the same, but because it is the air the children 
breathe. 

Now, it is in the twofold manner set forth, under this 
and the previous head of my discourse, that our race 
have fallen, as a race, into moral corruption and apos¬ 
tasy. In these two methods, the race have been sub¬ 
jected, as an organic unity, to evil; so that when they 
come to the age of proper individuality, the damage 
received has prepared them to set forth, on a course of 
blamable and guilty transgression. The question of 
original or imputed sin has been much debated in mod¬ 
ern times, and the effort has been to vindicate the per¬ 
sonal responsibility of each individual, as a moral agent. 
Nor is any thing more clear, on first principles, than 
that no man is responsible for any sin but his own. 
The sin of no person can be transmitted as a sin, or 
9 * 


102 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


charged to the account of another. But it does not 
therefore follow, that there are no moral connections 
between individuals, bj which one becomes a corrupter 
of others. If we are units, so also are we a race, and 
the race is one—one family, one organic whole; such 
that the fajl of the head involves the fall of all the 
members. Under the old doctrines of original sin, 
federal headship, and the like, cast away by many, 
ridiculed by not a few, there yet lies a great and mo¬ 
mentous truth, announced by reason as clearly as by 
Scripture—that in Adam all die; that by one man’s 
disobedience many were made sinners; that death hath 
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Not 
that this original scheme of unity is any disadvantage. 
I firmly believe and think I could show the contrary 
even. Enough that so the Scriptures speak, and that 
so we see, by inspection itself. There can be no 
greater credulity, than for any man to expect that 
a sinful and death-struck being, one who has fallen out 
of the harmony of his mold by sin, should yet com¬ 
municate no trace of evil from himself, no diseased 
or damaged quality, no moral discolor, - to the gene¬ 
rations that derive their existence from him. To 
make that possible, every law of physiology must 
be adjourned, and, what is more, all that we see 
with our eyes, in the eventful era of impressions, must 
be denied. 

I am well aware that those who have advocated, in 
former times, the church dogma of original sin, as well 
as those who adhere to it now, speak only of a taint 


OF THE FAMILY. 


105 


derived ay natural or physical propagation, and do not 
include the taint derived afterwards, under the law of 
family infection. It certainly can be no heresy to in¬ 
clude the latter; and, since it is manifest that both fall 
within the same general category of organic connection, 
it is equally manifest that both ought to be included, 
and, in all systematic reasonings, must be. If, during 
the age of impressions in the child, and previous to the 
development of will, a power is exerted over charac¬ 
ter—exerted necessarily, both as regards the sinful 
parent and the child, and that as truly as if it fell 
within the laws of propagation itself—it can not be 
right to attribute the moral taint wholly, or even prin¬ 
cipally, to propagation. Until the child comes to his 
will, we must regard him still as held within the matrix 
of the parental life; and then, when he is ripe for re¬ 
sponsible choice, as born for action—a proper and com¬ 
plete person. Taking this comprehensive view of the 
organic unity of successive generations of men, the 
truth we assert of human depravation is not a half-truth 
exaggerated, (which many will not regard as any truth 
at all,) but it is a broad, well-authenticated doctrine, 
which no intelligent observer of facts and principles 
can deny. It shows the past descending on the pres¬ 
ent, the present on the future, by an inevitable law, and 
yet gives every parent the hope of mitigating the sad 
legacy of mischief he entails upon his children, by 
whatever improvements of character and conduct he is 
able to make—a hope which Christian promise so far 
clears to his view, as even to allow him the presump* 


104 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


tion that his child may be set forth into responsible 
action, as a Christian person. 

In offering these thoughts, it will be seen that I have 
not digressed from my subject, but have extended the 
proof of my doctrine rather, discovering within it3 
scope, the fall of man itself. As a farther proof of the 
organic unity of the family, I allege— 

4. The fact that, in all organic bodies known to us— 
states, churches, sects, armies—there is a common spirit, 
by which they are pervaded and distinguished from 
each other. And we use this word spirit , in such cases, 
to denote a power interfused, a comprehensive will 
actuating the members, regarding also the common 
body itself, as a larger and more inclusive individual. 
How different, for example, is the spirit of France from 
the spirit of England ? the spirit of both from that of 
the United States ? and that from the spirit of the Spar¬ 
tan or Athenian republic ? This national spirit, too, is, 
as it were, a common power in each, by which the sub¬ 
ordinate individual members are assimilated, and made 
to have a kind of organic character. And so much is 
there in this, that an Englishman can not make to him¬ 
self a French character, or any one of us an English 
character. We can not act the character one of another; 
for so distant are the feelings, prejudices, and tempera¬ 
ments of each, that they can not even be accurately 
conceived and reproduced, unless we are actually en¬ 
veloped in them as an atmosphere. 

In the same manner, there is a peculiar spirit in every 
church. Whether you take the larger divisions, the 


OF THE FAMILY. 


105 


Jewish, the Greek, the Roman, the Episcopal, the 
Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Congregational, or de¬ 
scend to the particular churches of a given city, you 
will find something characteristic in each—a common 
power, which gives a common stamp to the members 
peculiar to themselves. Or, if you visit a Quaker set¬ 
tlement, where a few men and women are gathered into 
a kind of church family, you will discover that the 
members are pervaded, all, by a peculiar spirit, as dis¬ 
tinct from the world around them as if they were a 
new discovered people. And these Quaker settlements 
may be taken as a kind of intermediate link between 
the church-state and the family. 

Passing then to families, you are not surprised to dis¬ 
cover the same thing. This is specially evident where 
the family is isolated, and does not mingle extensively 
with the world. You can scarcely open the door, and 
take a seat in their house, least of all can you go to 
their table, or spend a night in their hospitality, with¬ 
out being impressed by the fact. And this family spirit 
will sometimes be exceedingly opposite to the spirit of 
goodness. Here it is* money, money, written on every 
face; here it is good living; here show; here scandal 
and detraction. Sometimes the sense of religion and 
of spiritual things will seem to be nearly lost, or obliter¬ 
ated. Sometimes a positive hatred of God and all 
good men and principles will constitute the staple of 
family feeling. Sometimes a dull and sullen contempt 
of such things will hold the place of open animosity. 

It is very true that the family spirit does not always 


106 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


perfectly master and assimilate all the members. You 
will find a Christian son or daughter, here and there, in 
spite of the ruling spirit of the house. This, however, 
because families are to some extent intermingled; in 
which it comes to pass that children often fall under the 
power of another spirit, that masters the spirit reigning 
at home. The children go into other families, where 
they are visited by other feelings. They go into the 
church of God, where the church spirit breathes another 
atmosphere. In the school, they are penetrated by the 
school spirit. In the shop, or in the transactions of 
trade, the same is true. Were it not for this, the fam¬ 
ily spirit might almost uniformly rule the character of 
the members. Who ever expects that an idolatrous 
religion, in the house, will not uniformly produce idola¬ 
ters ? So the Mohammedan spirit makes only Moham¬ 
medans. In like manner, a thievish house perpetuates 
a race of thieves. Consider also the ductility and the 
perfect passivity of childhood. Early childhood resists 
nothing. What is given it receives, making no selec¬ 
tion. To expect therefore that a child will form to 
himself a spirit opposite to the spirit of the family, 
without once feeling the power of a counteractive spirit, 
would be credulous in the highest degree. Doubt¬ 
less he has a conscience, which is the law of God, in 
his breast, and he has a will free to choose what his con¬ 
science requires. But his passions are unfolded before 
his discretion, his prejudices bent before he assumes the 
function of self-government. He breathes the atmos¬ 
phere of the house. He sees the world through his 


OF THE FAMILY. 


107 


parents’ eyes. Their objects become his. Their life 
and spirit mold him. If they are carnal, coarse, pas¬ 
sionate, profane, sensual, devilish, his little plastic 
nature takes the poison of course. Their very motions, 
manners, and voices, will be distinguishable in him. 
He lives and moves and has his being in them. 

I do not say, of course, that he will exactly resemble 
them in character. Were he to receive a contagious 
disease, he would, doubtless, be differently handled 
under it, from the person who gave the infection. I 
only say, that the moral disease of the family he assur¬ 
edly will take, and that, probably, • without even a ques¬ 
tion, or a cautious feeling started. If some other spirit, 
from other families, or the church, or the world, do not 
reach him, the organic spirit of the house will infallibly 
shape and subordinate his character. 

5. We are led to the same conclusions, by consider¬ 
ing what may be called the organic working of a family. 
The child begins, at length, to develop his character, in 
and through his voluntary power. But he is still under 
the authority of the parent, and has only a partial con 
trol of himself, in the development of which, he is gradu¬ 
ally approaching a complete personality. How, there 
is a perpetual working in the family, by which the wills, 
both of the parents and the children, are held in exer¬ 
cise, and which, without any design to affect character 
on one side or conscious consent on the other, is yet 
fashioning results of a moral quality, as it were by the 
joint industry of the house. And these results are to 
be taken, according to our definition, as included in the 


108 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


organic unity of tlie family. I except, of course, all 
the voluntary actings that are designed to influence 
the child, and are yielded to by him, as consciously 
right or wrong. 

The truth here brought to view is graphically set 
forth in my text. Whatever working there is in the 
house, all work together. If the fathers kindle the fire, 
and the women knead the cakes, the children will 
gather the wood, and the idol worship will set the whole 
circle of the house in action. The child being under 
the law of the parents, they will keep hkn at work to 
execute their plans, or their sins, as the case -may be; 
and, as they will seldom think of what they do, or 
require, so he will seldom have any scruple concerning 
it. The property gained belongs to the family. They 
have a common interest, and every prejudice or ani¬ 
mosity felt by the parents, the children are sure to feel 
even more intensely. They are all locked together, in 
one cause—in common cares, hopes, offices, and duties; 
for their honor and dishonor, their sustenance, their 
ambition, all their objects are common. So they are 
trained of necessity to a kind of general working, or 
cooperation, and, like stones, rolled together in some 
brook or eddy, they wear each other into common 
shapes. If the family subsist by plunder, then the 
infant i 3 swaddled as a thief, the child wears a thief’s 
garments, and feeds the growth of his body on stolen 
meat; and, in due time, he will have the trade upon 
him, without ever knowing that he has taken it up, or 
when he took it up. If the father is intemperate, the 


OF THE FAMILY. 


109 


children must go on errands to procure his supplies, 
lose the shame that might be their safety, be immersed 
in the fumes of liquor in going and coming, and why 
not rewarded by an occasional taste of what is so essen¬ 
tial to the enjoyment of life ? If the family subsist in 
idleness, and beggary, then the children will be trained 
to lie skillfully, and maintain their false pretences with 
a plausible effrontery^-all this, you will observe, not 
as a sin, but as a trade. 

Nor does what I am saying hold, only in cases of 
extreme viciousness and depravity. Whatever fire the 
fathers kindle, the children are always found gathering 
the wood—always helping as accessaries and appren¬ 
tices. If the father reads a newspaper, or a sporting 
gazette, on Sunday, the family must help him find it. 
If he writes a letter of business on Sunday, he will 
send his child to the office with the letter. If the 
mother is a scandal-monger, she will make her children 
spies and eaves-droppers. If she directs her servant to 
say, at the door, that she is not at home, she will some¬ 
times be overheard by her child. If she is ambitious 
that her children should excel in the display o'f finery 
and fashion, they must wear the show and grow up in 
the spirit of it. If her house is a den of disorder and 
filth, they must be at home in it. Fretfulness and ill- 
temper in the parents are provocations, and therefore 
somewhat more efficacious than commandments, to the 
same. The proper result will be a congenial assem¬ 
blage, in the house, of petulence and ill-nature. The 
niggardly parsimony that quarrels with a child, when 
10 


110 


THE ORGANIC UNITS’ 


asking for a book needful for bis proficiency at school, 
is teaching him that money is worth more than knowl¬ 
edge. If the parents are late risers, the children must 
not disturb the house, but stay quiet and take a lesson 
that is not to assist their energy and promptness in the 
future business of life. If they go to church only half 
of the day, they will not send their children the other 
half. If they never read the Bible, they will never 
teach it. If they laugh at religion, they will put a face 
upon it, which will make their children justify the con¬ 
tempt they express. This enumeration might be indefi¬ 
nitely extended. Enough that we see, in the working 
of the house, how all the members work together. 
The children fall into their places naturally, as it were, 
and unconsciously, to do and to suffer exactly what the 
general scheme of the house requires. "Without any 
design to that effect, all the actings of business, pleas¬ 
ure, and sin, propagate themselves throughout the cir¬ 
cle, as the weights of a clock maintain the workings of 
the wheels. Where there is no effort to teach wrong, 
or thought of it, the house is yet a school of wrong, 
and the life of the house is only a practical drill in 
evil. 

Having sufficiently established, as I think, by these 
illustrations, the organic unity of families, it remains 
to add some practical thoughts of a more specific na¬ 
ture. And— 

1. It becomes a question of great moment, as con¬ 
nected with the doctrine established, whether it is the 


OF THE FAMILY. 


Ill 


design of the Christian scheme to take possession of the 
organic laws of the family, and wield them as instru¬ 
ments, in any sense, of a regenerative purpose ? And 
here we are met by the broad principle, that Christian 
ity endeavors to make every object, favor, and relation, 
an instrument of righteousness, according to its original 
design. What intelligent person ever supposed that 
the original constitution, by which one generation de¬ 
rives its existence and receives the bent of its character 
from another, was designed of God to be the vehicle 
only of depravity ? It might as well be supposed that 
men themselves were made to be containers of deprav¬ 
ity. The only supposition that honors God is, that the 
organic unity, of which I speak, was ordained originally 
for the nurture of holy virtue in the beginning of each 
soul’s history; and that Christianity, or redemption, 
must of necessity take possession of the abused vehicle, 
and sanctify it for its own merciful uses. That an 
engine of so great power should be passed by, when 
every other law and object in the universe is appropria¬ 
ted and wielded as an instrument of grace, and that in 
a movement for the redemption of the race, is incon¬ 
ceivable. The conclusion thus reached does not carry 
us, indeed, to the certain inference that the organic 
unity of the family will avail to set forth every child 
of Christian parents, in a Christian life. But if we con¬ 
sider the tremendous power it has, as an instrument 
of evil, how far short of such an opinion does it leave 
us, when computing the reach of its power as an instru¬ 
ment of grace ? 


112 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


Passing next to the Scriptures, we find such reason¬ 
ings justified, as explicitly as we can desire. I am not 
disposed to press the language of Scripture, which is 
popular, to extreme conclusions. But I observe that 
Christ is called a second Adam and a last Adam: lan¬ 
guage, to say the least, that suits the idea of a proposed 
union with the race, under its organic laws—as if, en¬ 
tering into the Christian family, his design were to fill 
it with a family spirit, which shall controvert and mas¬ 
ter the old evil spirit. The declaration corresponds, 
that, as by one man’s disobedience many were made 
sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made 
righteous—language that measures the grace by the 
mischief, and shows it flowing in a parallel, but fuller 
stream. It may not be easy to settle, beyond dispute, 
the relation of the old covenant to the new ; but there 
can be no question that the church, under Abraham, 
was measured, in some sense, by the organic unity 
of the family of Abraham. The covenant was a family 
covenant, in which God engaged to be the God of the 
seed, as of the father. And the seal of the covenant 
was a seal of faith , applied to the whole house, as if the 
continuity of faith were somehow to be, or somehow 
might be maintained, in a line that is parallel with the 
continuity of sin, in the family. Nor was the result to 
depend on mere natural generation, however sanctified, 
but on the organic causes also, that are involved in fam¬ 
ily nurture, after birth. For we are expressly informed, 
(Gen. xviii. 19,) that God rested his covenant, or engage¬ 
ment, on the conduct of Abraham—“for I know him, 


OF THE FAMILY. 


113 


that lie will command his children and his household' 
after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to 
do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon 
Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.” And thus 
we see that the old church, beyond any possible ques¬ 
tion, was to have its grounds of perpetuity, in and by the 
same terms of organic unity, which sin has made the 
vehicle of depravity. Descending then to the New Tes¬ 
tament, Jesus the world’s Kedeemer is declared to have 
suffered, “that the blessing of Abraham might come on 
the Gentiles,” and the Gentiles are said to be “ grafted in.” 
The new “seed,” viz., “Christ,” are said to be “the seed 
of Abraham,” and “heirs of the promise” made to him. 
The old rite of proselyte baptism, which made the fam¬ 
ilies receiving it Jewish citizens and children of Abra¬ 
ham, was applied over directly to the Christian uses, and 
the rite went by “households;” even as the New Testa¬ 
ment promise also was—“to you and to your children.” 
Even the old Jewish law, that one Jewish parent made a 
Jewish child, is brought into the church, and one believing 
parent “sanctifies” the child. In all of which, it seems 
to be clearly held that grace shall travel by the same 
conveyance with sin; that the organic unity, which I 
have spoken of chiefly as an instrument of corruption, 
is to be occupied and sanctified by Christ, and become 
an instrument also of mercy and life. And thence it 
follows that the seal of faith, applied to households, is 
to be no absurdity; for it is the privilege and duty of 
every Christian parent that his children shall come forth 
into responsible action, as a regenerated stock. The or- 
10 * 


114 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


ganic unity is to be a power of life. God engages, on 
his part, that it may be, and calls the Christian parent 
to promise, on his part, that it shall be. Thus the 
cl urch has a constitutive element from the family in it 
still, as it had in the days of Abraham. The church 
life—that is, the Holy Spirit—collects families into a 
common organism, and then, by sanctifying the laws of 
organic unity in families, extends its quickening power 
to the generation following, so as. to include the future, 
and make it one with the past. And so the church, in 
all ages, becomes a body under Christ the head, as the 
race is a body under Adam the head—a living body, 
quickened by him who hath life in himself, fitly joined 
together and compacted by that which every joint 
supplieth. 

2. The theological importance of our doctrine of or¬ 
ganic unity, when brought up to this point, is exhibited 
in many ways, and especially in the fact that it gives 
the only true solution of the Christian church and of 
baptism as related to membership. I hardly dare at¬ 
tempt to speak of the “sacramental grace,” supposed to 
attend the rite of baptism, under the priestly forms of 
Christianity; for I have never been able to give any 
consistent and dignified meaning to the language, in 
which it is set forth. That there is a grace attendant, 
falling on all the parties concerned, is quite evident, if 
they are doing their duty; for no person, whether laic 
or priest, can do, or intend what is right, without some 
spiritual benefit. But the child is said to be “regener¬ 
ate, spiritually united to Christ, a new creature in Christ 


OF THE FAMILY. 


115 


Jesus,” under the official grace of baptism. Then this 
language, so full of import, is defined, after all, to mean 
only that the child is in the church, where the grace of 
God surrounds him—translated (not internally, but ex¬ 
ternally) from the sphere of nature into a new sphere, 
where all the aids of grace, available for his salvation, 
are furnished. Sometimes it is added that his sins are 
remitted, though no man is likely to believe that he has 
any sins to remit; or, if the meaning be that the cor 
r up ted quality, physiologically inherent in his nature, is 
washed away, he will show in due time that it is not; 
and no one, in fact, believes that it is. Then if it be 
asked, whether the new sphere of grace will assuredly 
work a gracious character? “no,” is the answer. “If 
the child is not faithful, or hinders the grace, he will lose 
it ”—that is, he will not stay regenerate. And then as 
the child, in every case, is sure, in some bad sense, not 
to be faithful, he is equally sure to lose the grace, and 
be landed in a second state that is worse than the first. 
And thus it turns out, after all, as far as I can see, that 
the grace magnified in the beginning, by words of so 
high an import, is a thing of no value—it is nothing. 
It is, in fact, one of our most decided objections to this 
scheme of sacramental grace, (paradoxical as it may 
.seem,) that, really and truly, there is not enough of im¬ 
port in it to save the meaning of the rite. The grace is 
words only, and an air of imposture is all that remains, 
after the words are explained. The rite is fertile only 
in maintaining a superstition. Practically speaking, it 
only exalts a prerogative. By a motion of his hand, 


116 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


the priest breaks in, to interrupt and displace all the 
laws of character in life—communicating an abrupt, 
ictic grace, as much wider of all dignity and reason, 
than any which the new light theology has asserted, as 
the regenerative power is more subject to a human dis 
pensation. A superstitious homage collects about his 
person. The child looks, on him as one who opens 
heaven by a ceremony! The ungodly parent hurries to 
him, to get the regenerative grace for his dying child. 
The bereaved parent mourns inconsolably, and even 
curses himself, that he neglected to obtain the grace for 
his child, now departed. The priest, in the eye, dis¬ 
places the memory of duty and godliness in the heart. 
A thousand superstitions, degrading to religion and 
painful to look upon, hang around this view of baptism. 
Not to produce them, the doctrine must yield up its 
own nature. 

In all this, I speak constructively, as reasoning from 
the doctrine asserted, and as I am able to understand it. 
Constructive results are never more than partially veri¬ 
fied by historic facts; for great truths, blended with the 
error, qualify and mitigate its effects. 

Now the true conception is, that baptism is applied 
to the child, on the ground of its organic unity with 
the parents; imparting and pledging a grace to sanc¬ 
tify that unity, and make it good in the field of re¬ 
ligion. By the supposition, however, the child still 
remains within the known laws of character in the 
house, to receive, under these, whatever good may 
reach him; not snatched away by an abrupt, fan- 


OF THE FAMILY. 


117 


tastical, and therefore incredible grace. He is taken 
to be regenerate, not historically speaking, but pre¬ 
sumptively, on the ground of his known connection 
with the parent character, and the divine or church 
life, which is the life of that character. Perhaps I shall 
be understood more easily, if I say that the child is po¬ 
tentially regenerate, being regarded as existing in con¬ 
nection with powers and causes that contain the fact, 
before time and separate from time. For when the fact 
appears historically, under the law of time, it is not 
more truly real, in a certain sense, than it was before. 
And then the grace conferred, being conferred by no 
casual act, but resting in the established laws of char¬ 
acter, in the church and the house, is not lost by un¬ 
faithfulness, but remains and lingers still, though abused 
and weakened, to encourage new struggles. 

Thus it will be seen that the doctrine of organic unity 
I have been asserting, proves its theologic value, as a 
ready solvent for the rather perplexing difficulties of 
this difficult subject. Only one difficulty remains, viz, 
that so few can believe the doctrine. 

3. It is evident that the voluntary intention of pa¬ 
rents, in regard to their children, is no measure, either 
of their merit or their sin. Few parents are so base, or 
so lost to natural affection, as really to intend the injury 
of their children. However irreligious, or immoral, 
they more commonly desire a worthy and correct char¬ 
acter for their children, often even a Christian character. 
But, in the great and momentous truth now set forth, 
you perceive it is not what you intend for your children, 



118 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


so much as what you are, that is to have its effect. 
They are connected, by an organic unity, not with your 
instructions, but with your life. And your life is more 
powerful than your instructions can be. They might 
be jealous of intended corruption, and withstand it; 
but the spirit of the house, which is your spirit, the 
whole working of the house, which is actuated by you, 
is what no exercise of will, even if they had more of it 
than they have, could well resist. Therefore, what you 
are, they will almost necessarily be; and then, as you 
are responsible for what you are, you must also be re¬ 
sponsible for the ruin brought on them. And, if you 
desired better things for them, as you probably say, 
the more guilty are you that, knowing and desiring 
better things, you thwarted your desires by your own 
evil life. 

So there are Christians who intend and do many things 
for their children, and thus acquit themselves of all 
blame in regard to their character. Here, alas! is the 
perpetual error of Christian parents, so called, that they 
endeavor to make up, by direct efforts, for the mis¬ 
chiefs of a loose and neglectful life. They convince 
themselves that teaching, lecturing, watch, discipline, 
things done with a purpose, are the sum of duty. As 
if mere affectations and will-works could cheat the laws 
of life and character ordained by God! Your character 
is a stream, a river, flowing down upon your children, 
hour by hour. What you do here and there to carry 
an opposing influence is, at best, only a ripple that you 
make on the surface of the stream. It reveals the 


OF THE FAMILY. 


119 


sweep of the current; nothing more. If you expect 
your children to go with the ripple, instead of the 
stream, you will he disappointed. I beseech you then, 
as you love your children, to admit other and worthier 
thoughts, thoughts more safe for them and certainly for 
you. Understand that it is the family spirit, the or¬ 
ganic life of the house, the silent power of a domestic 
godliness, working, as it does, unconsciously and with 
sovereign effect—this it is which forms your chil¬ 
dren to God. And, if this be wanting, all that you 
may do beside, will be as likely to annoy and harden as 
to bless. 

4. It seems to be a proper inference from the doctrine 
I have exhibited, that Christian parents ought to speak 
freely to their children, at times, of their own faults and 
infirmities. If they are faithful, if they live as Chris¬ 
tians, if the spirit of Christ bears rule in the house, they 
will yet have faults, and they ought to make no secret 
of the fact. The impression should be made, that they 
themselves are struggling with infirmities; that they are 
humbled under a sense of these infirmities; that there 
is much in them for God to pardon, much for their 
children to overlook, or even to forgive; and that God 
alone can assist them to lead themselves and their family 
up to a better world. Instead of lecturing their chil¬ 
dren, always, on their peccadilloes and sins, it would be 
better, sometimes, to give a lecture on their own. This, 
if rightly done, would attract the friendly sympathy of 
their children, guard them against the injurious impres¬ 
sions they make when they trip themselves, and unite 


120 


THE ORGANIC UNITY 


the whole family in a common struggle heavenward. 
There is no other way to correct the mixture of evil 
you will blend with the family spirit, but to deplore it, 
and make it an acknowledged truth, that you, too, are 
only a child in goodness. But if you take a throne of 
papal infallibility in your family, and endeavor to fight 
out, with the rod, what you fail in by your misconduct, 
you may make your children fear you and hate you, 
but you will not win them to Christ. Alas! there are 
too many Christian families that are only little pope¬ 
doms. The rule itself is tyranny—infallibility assumed, 
then maintained, by the holy inquisition of terror and 
penal chastisement! God will not smile on such a kind 
of discipline. 

5. It is evident what rule should regulate the soci¬ 
ety and external intercourse of children. It is a very 
great mercy, as I have said, that the children of a bad 
or irreligious family are sometimes permitted to be in¬ 
mates elsewhere; to go into virtuous and Christian 
families, where a better spirit reigns. There they see, 
perhaps, the genuine demonstrations of order, of purity, 
and of good affections; they hear the voice of prayer, 
they come where the spirit of heaven breathes. It is ? 
new world, and they are filled with new impressions. 
So, if a child may go to a school where order, right 
principle, virtuous manners, and the love of knowledge 
reign, and find a respite there from the shiftlessness, 
vice, and brutality at home, how great is the privilege! 
In this view, a good school is almost the only mercy 
that can be extended to the hapless sons and daughters 


OF THE FAMILY. 


121 


of vice. Their good—most dismal thought!—is to be 
delivered from their home; to escape the spirit of hell 
that encompasses their helpless age, and feel, though it 
be but a few hours a day, the power of another spirit! 

But I was speaking of the rule to be observed in the 
society of children. Let every Christian beware how 
he makes his children inmates in an irreligious family. 
It will do, sometimes, to allow the children of an irre¬ 
ligious family to be inmates, temporarily, in your own. 
You may do it for their advantage; and if you can en¬ 
list the hearts of your children in the merciful inten¬ 
tions you cherish, it may even be a good exercise for 
them. But it is a very different thing to place your 
children within the atmosphere of another house. Send 
them not where the spirit of evil reigns. Understand 
how plastic their nature is, how easily it receives the 
contagion of another spirit. You yourselves may have 
intercourse with ungodly persons; it may be your duty 
to seek it for their benefit; but you may well be cau¬ 
tious how far you subject your children, especially in 
early years, to the intercourse of irreligious families. 

And what shall I say to parents, who are themselves 
irreligious ? Perhaps you make it your boast that you 
give your children their liberty; that you mean to 
allow them to be just as religious as they please. And 
is that enough, do you think, to discharge your duties 
to them ? Is it enough to breathe the spirit of evil and 
sin into them and around them every hour, to give 
them no Christian counsel, to train them up in a prayer- 
less house, drill them into conformity with all your 
11 


122 


THE ORGANIC UNITY. 


worldly ways, and then say that you allow them full 
liberty to be Christians? Having them under your 
law, determining yourselves that organic spirit, which 
is to be the element, the very breath of their moral ex¬ 
istence, will you then boast that you mean to allow 
them to be as virtuous as they please ? Ah, if there be 
any argument, which might compel you to be Chris¬ 
tians yourselves, it is these arguments of affection that 
God has given you. But if you will not be Christians 
yourselves, then, at least, show your children some de¬ 
gree of mercy, by delivering them, as much as possible, 
from yourselves! Send them, as often as you may, 
where a better spirit reigns. Make them inmates with 
Christian families, as you have opportunity. Let them 
go where they will hear a prayer and see a Christian 
Sabbath. Send them, or take them with you, to the 
church of God, and the Sabbath-school. Give them a 
respite often from the family spirit and the organic law 
of the house. If you yourselves will not fashion them 
for the skies, let others, more faithful than you, and 
more merciful, do it for you. 


y, 


INFANT BAPTISM, HOW DEVELOPED. 

“ For the promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are 
•far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.”— Acts, ii. 39. 

It is a matter of wonder, with many professed disci¬ 
ples of Jesus in our time, that if the baptism of chil¬ 
dren and their qualified introduction into the church is 
any genuine part of the Christian economy, there is so 
little authority for it, by express mention in the New 
Testament writings. And yet, over opposite to this, 
it is quite as fair a subject of wonder that in Peter’s 
first sermon, on the day of Pentecost, when addressing 
only the adult sinners of the assembly, in terms appro¬ 
priate to their age, he should yet have given out, as it 
were unconsciously, a declaration that can signify noth¬ 
ing but the engagement of Christ, in his new and more 
spiritual economy, to identify children with their pa¬ 
rents, even as they had been identified in the coarser 
provisions of the Old. “ To you and to your children,” 
says the apostle, and here, covertly as it were to him¬ 
self, are hid infant baptism, infant church relations, 
potentially present but as yet undeveloped, even in 
what may be fitly called the seed sermon of the Chris¬ 
tian church. This was no time to be thinking of in¬ 
fants, or children, as related to church polity; probably 


124 


INFANT BAPTISM, 


there is not one present in the great assembly. It will 
be soon enough to settle the church position of chil¬ 
dren, when the question rises practically afterwards. 
These converted pilgrims, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, 
and strangers of all names, may not even so much as 
think of the question till they reach their homes again. 
But the language, we can see, is Jewish; language of 
promise, or covenant, only with a Christian addition— 
“And to them that are afar off, even as many as the 
Lord our God shall call ”—and Peter, as we know, did 
not really come into the meaning of this language him¬ 
self till years after, when the great sheet let down from 
heaven three times, and the actual ministering to a 
Gentile convert, showed him whither, and how far off, 
the call of the Lord might be going, in these times, to 
run. Let it not surprise us then, that the facts of in¬ 
fant baptism, and of infant church relations, covered, 
as they are, by Peter’s language in this first sermon, 
are still not yet developed, even to himself—any more 
than the fact of Christ’s call to the Gentiles. 

And when our Baptist brethren reiterate the formula, 
“ believe and be baptized,” “ believe and be baptized,” 
which they assume to be absolutely conclusive and final 
on the question of infant baptism because infants can 
not believe, they have only to make due allowance 
for the fact that Christianity must needs make its chief 
address, at the outset, to adult persons, and their argu¬ 
ment vanishes. Christianity will of course address itself 
to the subjects addressed; and, telling them what they 
must do to be saved, it will not of course tell them, at 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


125 


the same breath, every thing else that is fit to be 
known. In this manner its language was naturally 
shaped, for a considerable time, so as to meet only the 
conditions of adult minds. When at length it shall 
begin to be inquired, what is the condition of imma¬ 
ture, or infant minds? it will be soon enough to say 
something appropriate to them. 

Besides, the formula has another side—“ He that be- 
lieveth not shall be damned/’ Does it therefore follow, 
because it is so continually given to adults as the fixed 
law of salvation—he that believeth shall be saved, and 
he that believeth not shall be damned—that infants 
dying in infancy, and too young to believe, must there¬ 
fore be inevitably damned ? No, it will be answered, 
even by our Baptist brethren themselves; for the lan¬ 
guage referred to was evidently designed only for adult 
persons, and is of course to be qualified so as to meet the 
demands of reason, when we come to the case of child¬ 
hood. And why not also the language “ believe and be 
baptized?” Say not that the child is not old enough 
to believe, and therefore can not be baptized. If he is 
not old enough to believe, how can he better be saved ? 
Is it a greater, and higher, and more difficult thing to 
be admitted to baptism, than to be admitted to eternal 
glory ? 

Now I can most readily admit that the subject of in¬ 
fant baptism is not as definitely mentioned and form¬ 
ally prescribed in the New Testament, as we might, 
without any great extravagance, expect. For many 
will never notice how great a thing it is for Christianity 
11 * 


126 


INFANT BAPTISM, 


to pass from the first stage of mere propagation, to the 
stage of a fixed institution. What worlds of modifi¬ 
cation, correction, new arrangement, are necessary to 
the transition, they have never observed. They see 
the real figure of Christianity in the day of Pentecost, 
having never a conception, it may be, that this figure is 
most intensely occasional and casual, and the whole 
scene one that has scarcely a vestige of Christian in¬ 
stitution in it. 

What I propose, then, is to go over some ot me inci¬ 
dents of this Pentecostal scene and show you how it 
will drop out one point after another, as Christianity 
becomes a fixed institution; which institutional char¬ 
acter, again, will, by a necessary law, bring in other 
elements whereby to shape itself and complete its 
organization. 

First of all, we are delighted here at the picture 
given of a new form of society, and a thing so beauti¬ 
ful, so wonderfully hopeful and peculiar, we are ready 
to think must be the very essence of the new institu¬ 
tion itself. “And all that believed were together and 
had all things common; and sold their possessions and 
goods and parted them to all men, as every man had 
need. And they, continuing with one accord in the 
temple and breaking bread from house to house, did 
eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, 
praising God and having favor with all the people. 
And the Lord added daily to the church such as should 
be saved.” What a picture, taken as a mere external 
description! Saying nothing of internal experiences, 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


127 


it goes to the simple outward demonstrations, and by 
these it paints the spring-time, or first blossoming of 
the Christian love The beauty of the scene consists 
in the fact, that the disciples hardly know, as yet, what 
their love signifies. Assembled as pilgrims, from all 
parts of the world, the Christian love has fallen upon 
them, and they find, what is altogether new and strange, 
that rich and poor, honorable and base, despite of all 
distinctions, they love one another as brethren I Not 
knowing what to make of it, or, apparently, whether 
they are hereafter to have any thing to do but to love 
one another, they give themselves wholly up to love, 
as children to a play—come what will, they are all 
agreed in this, that they want only fellowship with each 
other, fellowship in doctrine, fellowship in praise, fel¬ 
lowship in bread, and why not also in goods ? 

How sad, that a scene so amiable and lovely could 
not continue, and that all Christian disciples, to the end 
of the world, could not fall into the same delightful 
picture in their conduct! Just as sad, I answer, as it 
is that children can not always be children; for these 
are the children of love, acting out the simple instinct 
of love, and wholly ignorant, as yet, of the cares, 
labors, and confused struggles, in which their Christian 
spirit is to have its trial. Doubtless we are to regret, 
as a loss, whatever departure we may have suffered 
from the spirit of these first disciples; for the spirit of 
Christian life is one and the same, in all diversities of 
form and conduct. But it is plain to any one, who will 
exercise the least consideration, that it was just as im- 


128 


INFANT BAPTISM, 


possible to perpetuate these first demonstrations, as it 
is to preserve the infantile airs of children after child 
hood is passed, carrying them still on through the 
sturdy toils and cares of a mature age. The moment 
we leave these first scenes, following the pilgrims off 
to their homes, see them entering into the duties of 
home, see the Christian churches getting body and form 
in so many places and becoming incorporated as fixed 
elements of human society, we shall discover that 
almost all the modes and hospitalities of the Pente¬ 
costal society are inevitably discontinued. 

But we must go deeper into the history and show, 
by distinct specification, how intensely casual much 
that belongs to the scene of the Pentecost was even 
designed to be, and how many things are to be added 
to give the tfew gospel a permanently instituted life. 
We begin with the things casual that were designed to 
cease. 

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was here to be inau¬ 
gurated, as a Divine Force, entered systematically into 
the world, to work subjectively in men all the charac¬ 
ters of love and beauty that are shown objectively in 
the life of Jesus. He is to be, in other words, a per¬ 
petual indwelling Christ in men’s hearts. In times 
more ancient, good men had been wont to pray for 
spiritual help in a manner correspondent, but now the 
kingdom of Help, that kingdom which is righteousness 
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, is to be set up 
as a Christly dispensation. But, at the beginning, there 
must be something done before the senses, to waken 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


129 


sefisuous impressions. Otherwise, whatever power the 
Spirit might exert in the recesses of the human soul, 
it would probably occur to no one to refer the effects 
wrought to a Divine Agency. Hence the wondrous 
character of the scene, which here bursts upon the 
world—a sound from heaven, a rushing, mighty wind 
sweeping through the hall, lambent tips of fire resting 
on the heads of the assembly, wondrous utterances or 
tongues. 

Now, the physical incidents of this scene had noth¬ 
ing to do with its substantial import, save as they were 
added to suggest the idea of a Divine Agency. They 
hold the same mechanical relation, as a vehicle, to the 
Spirit, that the human nature of Jesus held to the 
Divine Word. They are the body, the sensible show 
of the Spirit, .the smoke by which the fire was revealed. 
So of the tongues. They were the sign of a power 
that was playing the action of the inner man, and mak ¬ 
ing audible, as it were, the activity within, of a Divine 
Influence. All these, like the miraculous gifts so con¬ 
spicuous in the subsequent history, w«f® manifestations 
of the Spirit, given to profit withal; being only 
accidents or exponents, were, of course to be discon¬ 
tinued, when the doctrine of a spiritual influence from 
(rod was sufficiently developed—discontinued and never 
restored, unless perhaps in cases where the sense of the 
Spirit is so nearly lost as to require a kind of new de¬ 
velopment. Accordingly as these fall off, the spir¬ 
itual influence inaugurated by such tokens, may be 
expected, for much the same reasons, to move upon the 


130 


INFANT BAPTISM 


world in a less imposing method; to remit, in some 
degree, the extraordinary, and, as life is itself ordinary, 
become, to the human spirit, what the air is to the 
body—a Perpetual Element of inbreathing love; to 
dwell in the families, to follow the individual, and 
whisper holy thoughts in solitary places and silent 
hours. He is to fill the world, and be a Spirit of Life 
and love, present to all human hearts. He will pro¬ 
duce the same exercises, produced in the first disciples, 
in the scene of the Pentecost. Sometimes, too, he will 
glorify himself in scenes of social effect and power. 
But the grand reality revealed is an Abiding Spirit— 
not a Scene Spirit, but an Abiding Spirit—accordantly 
with Christ’s own promise — 11 He shall give you 
another Comforter, that he may abide with you for¬ 
ever.” When the sound, therefore, which then shook 
the air is hushed to be heard no more; when the rush¬ 
ing, mighty wind that typified so powerfully the breath 
of the arriving Spirit of God has dropped into calm; 
when the fire-tips have ceased to burn on the heads 
of all assemblies, and all the Pentecostal signs are over; 
then is there seen to be left as a result, the fixed con¬ 
viction of a Jesus unlocalized, a Spirit of Jesus pres¬ 
ent in all places, working in all hearts, present, in con¬ 
scious manifestation, to all discerning souls, as the life 
of their life. How very casual, in this view, is the 
scene of the Pentecost. And that is very soon dis¬ 
covered. One year afterwards, not even the persons 
present in that scene look upon it as being, in any sense, 
a properly institutional element of Christianity. The 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


131 


Spirit inaugurated is institutional, the life of all hoi} 
institutions, but nothing in the forms of the scene is 
regarded as having a perpetual character. 

Again, it will be found that the preaching of the 
day of Pentecost, powerful as the sermon of Peter ap¬ 
pears to have been upon the assembly at that time, 
was not such, either in style or substance, as could 
be continued after the first day or two of the gos¬ 
pel proclamation, and was in fact superseded, in a very 
short time, by the sturdier methods of argument and 
instruction. We see this in all the epistles, and as truly 
in those of Peter as of Paul. The infant churches had 
scarcely begun to be institutions, before this change was 
apparent. 

And yet we have many, in our own time, who do 
not appear to see this, even though the manner of 
Peter’s sermon is so completely gone by, that one can 
hardly imagine how it had any power at all. 11 See,” 
they say, “ how simple it was, how easy of apprehen¬ 
sion—nothing but a recitation of facts—and then what 
power it had!” As if the telling, over and over, of 
old news, announcing again facts that have been 
known to every reader of the New Testament from his 
childhood up, as familiarly as he knows his right hand, 
could have the same value and be means to ends for 
producing the same effects I Most of us have a better 
understanding of the subject, perceiving, as clearly as 
possible, that while Peter’s sermon was good for the 
occasion, it was good for almost no occasion since. It 
was one of the first things, of which there can not, by 


132 


INFANT BAPTISM; 


the supposition, be many. A camp meeting, or a band 
of pilgrims gathered for a single week, a thousand 
miles from home, may well enough desire such kind 
of preaching as will serve the zest of the occasion. 
But it is no design of Christianity to get by the need 
of intelligence, and fashion a sanctity that has no fel¬ 
lowship with dignity. A regularly instituted Christian 
congregation, who are to live and grow up on the 
same spot, from age to age, it has long ago been dis¬ 
covered, must be compelled to gird up the loins of their 
mind. They must reject the mere gospel drinks and 
betake themselves to meat. Their life, it will be found, 
depends, not on scenes and machineries, not on storms 
and paroxysms, but on a capacity rather to receive in¬ 
struction ; to be exercised in high argument, to bear 
with patience the discovery how little they know, and 
on a good healthful appetite for Christian food. To be 
able to burn in a fire decides nothing. They must know 
how to supply the fuel of devotion out of their own 
exercise in God’s truth. They must love a ministry 
of doctrine, or intellectual teaching. Neither is it doc¬ 
trine, as many fancy, when they complain of a want 
of doctrinal preaching, to get a few stale dogmas im¬ 
pounded in the head, or stuck in the brain, as dead flies 
in ointment: all the rich treasures of thought, and high 
motive, and solemn contemplation, garnered up in 
God’s word, must be brought out, seen, understood, and 
fall upon the soul, as manna from the skies. Like 
manna, too, it must be the supply of to-day only. A 
new shower must be gathered for to-morrow, and the 


HOW DEVELOPED. 133 

mind of the people must be kept in active and pro 
gressive motion. 

Such a kind of preaching will feed the intelligence 
of the hearers, and raise up pillars in the churches. 
And here is the great distinction between the preaching 
proper to the scene of the Pentecost, and that of an 
established Christian congregation. It is the difference 
between Peter, giving news to the pilgrims, and Paul of- 
ering some “things hard to be understood,”to churches 
of organized disciples. Such preaching is required, in 
an established congregation, as will exert an educating 
power. And yet it will, in that way, be a converting 
power, as efficacious as any other, if only it is expected 
to be. When the community is more deeply moved 
by spiritual things, it will, of course, vary its tone and 
its subjects to suit the occasion, perhaps multiply its 
efforts; but never as being in a hurry, lest the grace 
of the occasion may be capriciously withdrawn, never 
over-preaching, or preaching out, as if nothing were to 
be done by thought in the hearers, but all by the power 
of a commotion round them; for it is not the same 
thing to fall out of dignity and self-possession as to get 
rid of sin, neither is a fever or a whirlwind any proper 
instrument of sanctification. Mournful proofs have we 
to the contrary. Better is it to reserve a power for the 
ordinary, even when we are in the extraordinary. It 
is not wisdom to overwork the harvest, so that we have 
no strength left for the bread. Rather let the preacher 
believe in the Abiding Spirit, and count upon a kind 
of perpetual harvest. Let him think to gain many to 
12 


134 


INFANT BAPTISM 


Christ imperceptibly, by keeping alive the interest of 
God’s trntb, and letting it distill upon the hearers as a 
dew, and through them on the rising families. What 
ever he gains in this way will assuredly remain; for it 
is not the birth of an occasion, but of quiet conviction. 
It partakes the nature of habit. It is the fruit of a 
godly training. Seldom, therefore, will it fall away, or 
disappoint expectation. 

There is yet another class of incidents, or demonstra¬ 
tions, in the scene of the Pentecost, which are referable 
to the fact that these first converts are not at home, and 
all these must, of course, be modified, or discontinued 
by their simple return. They are pilgrims at the 
feasts; Parthians, Medes, Elamites—Jewish emigrants, 
who have returned from every most distant clime of the 
world, to enjoy the great festivals of their religion. 

Their property, their business, and, more commonly, 
their families, are left behind. Many of them are poor 
persons, wholly unable to support the expense even of 
a short stay at Jerusalem. The others can not, of course, 
leave them to suffer. So they divide their resources 
with the poor; and some, who belong at Jerusalem, are 
moved by the overflowing love of Christ in their hearts, 
to part with their whole property, that they may re¬ 
lieve the necessities of the brotherhood. Only a few 
days or weeks are thus spent together. Probably, 
within three months, they are, every man, at home in 
his own house, providing for his own family, out of the 
increase of his own industry and property. During 
their short stay at Jerusalem, they had nothing to do 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


135 


but to exercise their religion. Accordingly they gave 
themselves wholly up to it. Now the religious occasion 
is past; the extraordinary is over, and the ordinary has 
returned. By this time, they have learned, probably, 
and received it even as a Christian maxim, that one 
■who does not provide for his own , denies the faith, and 
is worse than an infidel. 

Again, these first disciples had not yet been called to 
blend their piety with the common cares and duties of 
life. Quite likely, they did not, for some time, consider 
whether they should hereafter have any thing more to 
do with these gross and earthly callings. But we, at 
least, have learned what they must also have learned 
very soon, that though we can not live by bread alone, 
it is yet difficult to live without bread. We have 
learned that the very church of God itself is perpetu¬ 
ated, in part, by industry and production, that it can 
not live by expenditure, that we have something there¬ 
fore to do, besides breaking bread from house to house; 
six days to labor, a spectacle of thrift to present to 
mankind, as a proof that Christian virtue has its bless¬ 
ings. We must shine as good citizens, neighbors, pa¬ 
rents, friends. Life is no mere camp-meeting scene; 
but the greatest of all Christian attainments, we find, is 
precisely that which the first disciples had not yet 
thought of, the learning how to blend the spiritual and 
economical or industrial together; to live in the world, 
and not be of it; to labor in earthly things, and main¬ 
tain a conversation in heaven; to unite thrift with char¬ 
ity, and separate gain from greediness; to use property, 


136 


INFANT BAPTISM, 


and not worship it; to prepare comfort, without purs a 
ing pleasure. For it is, by just this kind of trial, that 
all spiritual strength is gotten, and the Christian life 
becomes a light to men. 


Haying glanced, in this manner, at some of the types 
and conditions of the scene of Pentecost that were, and 
were inevitably to be, discontinued, let us notice briefly, 
seme of the matters that must also as inevitably be 
added in the process by which Christianity becomes an 
institution. 

Thus, first of all, as Christ and his evangelists had 
given the new facts to the world, so it was inevitable 
that a grand process of thinking or mental elaboration 
should begin to work out the import or doctrinal inter¬ 
pretation of those facts. In this process, diverse opin¬ 
ions, formulas, sects, controversies, must be developed— 
consequently new modes of duty. 

The simplicity of mere love, displayed, as it was, in 
the first scenes of the gospel, could not continue, how¬ 
ever desirable it may seem. Men must think, as well 
as love, and thought must make its inroads on mere re¬ 
lations of feeling. And, thus a long process of forming 
and reforming must go on, till the Christ of the head 
becomes as catholic as the Christ of the heart. Mean¬ 
time, all must stand for the truth, and there must be no 
countenance given to error. The happy days of Chris¬ 
tian childhood are left far behind, and every church is 
set in relations of duty that are partly antagonistic. It 
must take a form required by its new necessities. What 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


137 


to do for the truth, whom to acknowledge, when to re¬ 
sist and when to forbear, how much consequence to 
attribute to opinions, over what errors to spread the 
mantle of charity, how to maintain a polemic attitude 
in the unity of the Spirit—these are the grave questions 
that are to occupy ministers and churches, and, in the 
right exercise of which, they are to justify their Chris¬ 
tian name. And on this will depend the power of 
religion, quite as much as on the duties done to those 
who are aliens and unbelievers. 

Next we pass on to a field where the new creating 
power of .the gospel is displayed yet more distinctly. 
The first disciples had no thought but to swim in the 
strange joy they felt, as forgiven of God and filled with 
the love of Jesus. Of Christianity, as a fixed institu¬ 
tion, taking the whole society of man into its bosom, 
and becoming the school of the race, they had probably, 
at first, no conception. Passing thence to the modern 
Christian faith, how great is the change! What a va¬ 
riety of means, instruments and arrangements has it 
created, maintaining all from age to age, by a sacrifice, 
compared with which, the casual contributions to poor 
saints at Jerusalem were far less significant in their 
effects, and, perhaps, not more to be commended, as 
proofs of a Christian spirit. 

First, a house of worship; and, in order to this, the 
new spiritual life must become a holder of real estate, 
and be acknowledged as such in the laws. To make the 
place worthy of the cause, genius and taste are to be called 
into exercise, and a new Christian art developed. 

12 * 


138 


INFANT BAPTISM, 


To maintain expenses and repairs, and collect and 
disburse charities, there must be officers created, such as 
deacons and committees of various kinds, and this re¬ 
quires elections, bye-laws, records, and a full organized 
institutional state. 

Mere forms and sacraments being insufficient, preach¬ 
ers of the word must be carefully trained for the service, 
and installed therein, to feed the intelligence of the 
flock, and lead them in the truth. Their official rights 
and duties must be ascertained, and, correspondency, 
the rights and duties of the flock—matters all how dis¬ 
tant from the scene of the Pentecost! 

The times and forms of worship need to be settled; 
for, whether a liturgy is used or not, no organic action 
can be maintained without forms of some kind, to serve 
as laws of concert and rules of order. 

Christian music, as a new art, must be created, and 
the children and youth must be trained therein, so.that 
all may bear their part in the worship, and the worship 
exercise and inspire a devout feeling in all. 

There must be a punctual and regular attendance 
somehow established and made obligatory; for the habit 
of worship is necessary, to its value, as a power over 
character. Hence there must be a common responsi¬ 
bility—all must be enlisted. There must be a church 
spirit, and, in order to this, a fraternal spirit in the 
members, verified by mutual sympathy and aid under 
the common burdens of life—a kind of service, I will 
a Id, which is often far more beneficent than a commu- 
i r> y goods would be; for this latter might be only a 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


139 


jpc«mium given to idleness, while the other is but a good 
encouragement to the ingenuous struggles of industry. 
There must, however, be some Christian provision for 
the poor, that they also may have their part in the 
Christian flock, and the blessings of charity descend 
upon it and dwell in it. 

Nor is the article of dress, in a Christian assembly, 
too insignificant to be a subject of care. Probably no 
one had a thought of this in the Pentecostal assembly; 
but we find the apostles, not long after, giving serious 
lectures to the disciples upon their dress. Dress and 
manners, manners and morals, morals and piety, are all 
connected by an intimate or secret law. A people, 
therefore, who are careful to appear before God, in a 
well-chosen, modest, and appropriate dress—one that is 
neither careless nor ostentatious, one that indicates so¬ 
briety, neatness, good sense, and a desire to be approved 
of God more than to be seen of men—will avoid barba¬ 
rous improprieties of every sort. Their manner will 
express reverence to God. What they express, they 
will be likely to feel; and if they become true disciples 
of Christ, as there is greater reason to hope, their man¬ 
ner will have a nicer propriety, and their whole de¬ 
meanor will be more thoughtful, consistent, and lovely. 

It may, by-and-bye, become evident that, in order 
to maintain the full power of religion, and to gain 
the neglected youth or children, and such children as 
would grow up otherwise in the power of vice, that a 
parish school must be instituted, as in Scotland, in con¬ 
nection with every church. And then, at a much later 


140 


INPANT BAPTISM 


day, it may become evident that Sunday-schools require 
to be instituted in the same way, and that these, enlist¬ 
ing the more capable and devoted of the churches in 
Christian studies, and good works—works, that is, of 
teaching and attention to the poor—are finally regarded 
every where, though wholly unknown to the apostles 
and the Pentecostal assembly, as being among the best 
means for the training of a practically Christian charac¬ 
ter, and the gathering in of the outcast families to God. 

So far we proceed without difficulty; all these things, 
though never preached by apostles, must finally come, 
we perceive, as outgrowths of the Christian church. 
Pentecostal incidents will disappear, and these will as 
certainly grow apace in their time. 

But the particular point for which I have drawn this 
sketch has been purposely left behind. Infant baptism, 
the relation of the seminal and undeveloped first period 
of human existence to Christ and his flock, that which 
appears only implicitly in the sermon of Peter, on the 
day of Pentecost—where is this, and what is to come, 
in the way of development, here ? There was no reason, 
or even room, among the scenes of the Pentecost, for so 
much as thinking on this subject of infants and their 
church relations, and scarcely more for a considerable 
time afterward. It could not become a subject of atten¬ 
tion, until the church itself began to settle into forms 
of order and structural organization; and how soon 
that came to pass we do not definitely know. It should 
therefore be no subject of wonder that infant baptism, 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


141 


figures somewhat indistinctly, for so long a time at 
least; and scarcely more, that it shows itself only by im¬ 
plication and a kind of tacit development, for a brief 
time afterwards. 

Furthermore, if it came to pass by a transference 
of Jewish ideas into Christian spheres, Jewish modes 
and conditions into the Christian order and economy— 
just as Peter’s Jewish language, when he said, in his Pen¬ 
tecostal speech, “ to you and to your children,” finally 
came back to him in its Christian power,—it would make 
no bold and staring figure any where. If the Christian 
teachers looked to see all the better mercies of the old 
economy transferred into the Christian, and exalted 
there into some higher and more perfect meaning, we 
ought certainly not to expect any debate, or any thing 
but a silent, scarcely conscious flow of transition, when 
infants are taken to be with their parents, in the church, 
the covenant, the Christian Israel of their faith. And 
in just this way the defect of any bold declarations on 
the subject of infant baptism in the writings of the 
New Testament, and the fact that it appears only in a 
few historic glimpses, and occasional modes of speed 
that are subtle implications of the fact, is sufficiently 
accounted for. 

But we are inquiring after the mode in which this 
rite became an accepted element of the Christian organ¬ 
ization, and a part of the church practice, as we cer¬ 
tainly know that it did at sometime afterward. Peter 
probably conceived as little what his language might 
infer respecting it, as he certainly did, what hidden 


142 


INFANT BAPTISM, 


import tliere was in his testimony, by the same words, 
of a grace to the Gentiles ; for he spoke in prophetic ex¬ 
altation, as the ancient prophets did, not knowing what 
the spirit of Christ that was in them did signify. But 
suppose one of these adult converts at the Pentecost to 
have set off, after the few happy weeks of his sojourn 
are ended, for his home in some remote region of Ara¬ 
bia, Parthia, or Greece. He carries Christ with him, he 
is a new man, filled with a strange joy, burning with a 
strange, all-sacrificing love to the cause of his new 
Master, and to every sinner of mankind. He begins to 
preach the Christ he loves to his friends, tells them all 
he knows of the new gospel, speaks to them as one 
whom Christ has endowed with power to speak. He 
gathers a little circle, which we may call a church, 
around him, perhaps converts a little obscure synagogue 
into a church. He knows that he himself was bap¬ 
tized as a token of his faith, and he has heard, a thou¬ 
sand times repeated, Christ’s word, “he that believeth 
and is baptized,” “ except a man be born of water and 
of the Spirit,” and he does not scruple to baptize all his 
new fellow disciples. Then comes the question, what 
of the families ? what of the infants we have, who are 
not old enough to believe? This, on the supposition 
that he had heard nothing of infant baptism before he 
left Jerusalem, which may or may not be true. But he 
has heard the whole story of Christ’s life many times 
over, including the fact of his beautiful interest in 
children, and his declaration—“of such is the kingdom.” 
He recollects also the ancient religion of his people; 


HOW DEVELOPED. 


143 


how it identified always the children with the fathers, 
and included them in the covenant of the fathers, rais¬ 
ing doubtless the question, whether the gospel in its no¬ 
bler, wider generosity and completer grace, would fall 
short even of the old religion in its tenderness to the 
family affections, and its provisions for the religious 
unity of families. And just here, we will suppose, the 
words of Peter, in that first sermon flash on his recol¬ 
lection—“ For the promise is to you and to your chil 
dren.” They meant almost nothing, it may be, when 
they were spoken, but how full and clear the meaning 
they now take. It is like a revelation. The doubt 
struggling in his bosom is over, the question is settled. 
“My children,” he says, “are with me, one with me in 
my faith, included with me in all my titles and hopes, and 
as I came in, out of the defilements of sin, and was bap¬ 
tized in token of my cleansing, so too are they to share 
my baptism and be heirs together with me in the grace 
of life. 

Thus instructed, he will baptize his children, and 
make his religion a strictly family grace, expecting them 
to grow up in it; others also consenting with him in the 
same conclusion, and offering their children to God in 
the same manner. And, as the result, they will no 
more be Christians with families, but Christian families— 
all together in the church of God. In this manner the 
Pentecost itself, when the seeds that are in it are devel¬ 
oped, will almost certainly issue the adult baptism there 
begun, the baptism of the three thousand, in the com¬ 
mon baptism of the house. 


144 


INFANT BAPTISM. 


And here we have, in small, just what would most 
naturally take place in the development of Christian¬ 
ity itself. Taken as connected with its own precedent 
history and preparations, the church could hardly be 
held back from infant baptism, except by some specific 
revelation. 


VI. 

APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY OF INFANT BAPTISM. 

“And I baptized also the household of Stephanas.”—1 Corinthians , i. 16. 

We have traced the conditions under which infant 
baptism would almost certainly be developed. But we 
do not leave the question here. We have many and 
distinct evidences for the rite, which are abundantly de¬ 
cisive ; some from the nature of the family state, some 
from the New Testament, and some from the subse¬ 
quent history of the church. These I will now under¬ 
take to present in the briefest manner possible. And 

1. The organic unity of the family makes a ground for 
it, and sets it in terms of rational respect. The child that 
is born, is really not born, in the higher sense of that 
term, till he has breathed a long time. He does not live 
in his own will, but is in the will and life of his parents. 
To bring him forward into his own will and responsi¬ 
bility is the problem of years. He is in the matrix 
still of parental character, where all the graces, faiths, 
prayers, promises, of the parents are his also. He lives 
and breathes in them, and is of them, almost as truly as 
they are of themselves. What we call the house, is the 
organic life that grows him as a mind or agent, tempers 
him, works him into his habits, fashions him as by a pre- 
13 


146 APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 

cedent power to be born, and finally take dominion of 
liimself. Why then should religion make no recogni¬ 
tion of a fact so profoundly religious ? Why not as¬ 
sume that the child is just where he is; in the faith of 
the house, to grow up there ? It would even be a sup¬ 
position against nature to suppose that he will not. It 
is very true that he may not, because the faith of the 
house is no faith, or so mixed with sense and passion 
as to have none of the true power. Still, when the 
discipleship is assumed to be made by faith, it must 
also be assumed that, being so made, it will have all the 
power of faith, shaping the parental life in the molds 
of that power, and just as certainly including or in¬ 
closing in those molds, there to be also shaped, the 
infant life of the offspring. The father and mother 
are not merely a man and a woman, but they are a 
man and woman having children; and accordingly it 
is the father and mother, that is, the man and woman 
and their children, that are to be baptized. 

2. It is precisely this great fact of an organic unity 
that is taken hold of and consecrated, in the field of 
religion, by the Abrahamic and other family covenants. 
And the whole course of revelation, both in the Old 
and New Testament, is tinged by associations, and sprin¬ 
kled over with expressions that recognize the religious 
unity of families, and the inclusion of the children with 
the parents. All the promises run—“to you and to 
your childrenfor Peter’s language here is only an 
inspired transfer and reassertion of the Jewish family 
ideas, at the earliest moment, in the field of Christianity 


OF INFANT BAPTISM. 


147 


itself. It recognizes the fact that Christianity is just 
what we know it to be, nothing but a continuation and 
fuller development of the old religion. It widens out 
the scope of the old religion, so as to include all na¬ 
tions, even as the prophets foretold, and raises all the 
rites and symbols into a higher spiritual sense, as they 
were appointed from the first to be raised. Taken all to¬ 
gether, the old- and the new constitute a perfect whole 
or system, and the process is neither more nor less than 
God’s way of developing and authenticating a univer¬ 
sal religion. In this universal religion, therefore, we 
are to look for the continuance onward of the old 
family character and the inclusive oneness of fathers 
with their children. The only difference will be that 
the oneness will be raised into a more spiritual and 
higher sense, just as every thing else was raised. The 
children are thus looked upon to be presumptively as 
believing in the faith, and regenerated in the regenera¬ 
tion of the fathers. And here again, 

3. Circumcision comes to our aid, as another and dis¬ 
tinct evidence. For it was given to be “a seal of the 
righteousness of faith,” and the application of it, as a 
seal, to infant children, involves all the precise diffi¬ 
culties—neither more nor less—that are raised by the 
deniers of infant baptism. Let the point here made be 
accurately understood. The argument is not that infant 
baptism was directly substituted for circumcision. Of 
this there is no probable evidence. Such a substitution 
could not have been made without remark, discussion, 
opposition of prejudice, and the raising of contentions 


148 


APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 


that would have required distinct mention, many times 
over, in the apostolic history. But the argument is 
this: that the Jewish mind was so familiarized by 
custom with the notion of an inclusive religious unity 
in families, (partly by the rite of circumcision,) that 
Christian baptism, being the seal of faith, was natu¬ 
rally and by a kind of associational instinct, applied 
over to families in the same manner. Not to have 
made such an application would have required some 
authoritative interposition, some dike of positive hin¬ 
drance, to turn aside the current of Jewish preposses¬ 
sions. And if there had risen up, somewhere, a man 
of Baptist notions, to ask, where is the propriety of ap¬ 
plying baptism, given as a rite for believers, to infants, 
who we certainly know are not old enough to believe ? 
he could not even have begun to raise an impression 
by it. Was not circumcision given to Abraham to be 
the seal of faith ? and has it not been applied from his 
time down to the present, in this way—applied to in¬ 
fant children eight day’s old ? True it is the doctrine 
of Christ, “ he that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved,” and our apostles too are saying, “ if thou be- 
lievest with all thy heart thou mayest.” So we all say 
and think, as relating to adult persons; but do we not 
all know that what is given to the father includes the 
children, and that his faith is the faith of the house ? 
Nothing, in short, is plainer than that every argument 
raised to convict infant baptism of absurdity, holds, in 
the same manner, as convicting circumcision of ab¬ 
surdity, and all the religious polity of the former ages. 


OF INFANT BAPTISM. 


149 


Every such argument, too, mocks the religious feeling 
and conviction of all these former ages, in a way of 
disrespect equally presumptuous. 

It is very true, as declared by the apostle Paul, in 
his epistle to the Eomans, that circumcision, seal of 
faith as it was, did not always have its meaning ful¬ 
filled ; “ for all are not Israel that are of Israel.” Esau 
and Edom, his posterity, became, thus, an apostate race; 
and this, in a certain sense, by Providential appoint¬ 
ment. But the scope of God’s providential purpose, 
as every intelligent ChfWtaH ought to know, does not 
correspond with the scope of his grace or the measures 
of his gifts and promises. Por the Providential plan 
takes in all the perversities of human action, while the 
grace-plan or promise corresponds with the aims and 
measures of God’s paternal goodness. He means and 
offers, in other words, more than human perversity will 
take; gives a presumption of good, on his part, which 
he knows that human wrongs will not allow to be 
actualized. Then, as his Providential purposes and 
plan are graduated to what will actually be, not to what 
he means, wishes, and promises, it follows that the facts 
or issues of his Providential order do not answer to the 
scope of his gracious intention. And thus it comes to 
pass that, while he gives a seal of faith, which ought to 
be answered, by a result in which all are Israel that are 
of Israel, the fact is different. Had Israel ruled his 
house as he ought, had Eebekah been an honest woman, 
loving both her sons impartially, and seeking the true 
welfare of both—not conspiring with one to rob and 
18 * 


150 


APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 


cheat the other—Esau might have been a different 
man, and Edom might have been a family of Israel. 
In circumcision, as a seal of faith, God gave, on his part, 
the pledge and presumption that so it should be. But 
Edom was thrown off into apostasy by courses of hu¬ 
man perversity that disappointed the seal. And the 
same is true of infant baptism in all those cases where 
the faith is narrowed, or denied, by parental miscon¬ 
duct. There is yet no falsity in the circumcision, or 
the baptism, because all which it signified was true; 
viz., that God, on his part, • sought and meant and 
would have made actual, the whole promise of it. 
How often is adult baptism itself applied to such as 
have no faith at all; but this does not affect the inher¬ 
ent truth of the rite, and if they should live so as not 
to allow it any correspondence with fact, when applied 
to their children, does it any more affect the truth of it 
there ? The rite measures God’s intent and promise, 
and refuses to narrow itself by the perversity of the 
subjects. It says, “this child shall grow up in faith—• 
so it is given.” Then if, by unbelief and graceless con¬ 
duct in the parents, it grows up to be the stem of an 
Edomitish stock, it will not disappoint God’s providen¬ 
tial order and plan, and as little will it disprove God’s 
promise and truth in the baptism. God is honored, and 
the rite is honored still. It is only the parental faith 
and life that are not. 

4. It appears that Christian baptism was not a rite 
wholly new, but a reapplication of proselyte baptism. 
The custom had been, as the Gentile was an unclean 


OF INFANT BAPTISM. 


151 


person, to baptize him, as a token of cleansing, when he 
was received to be a Jew; and his family, of course, 
were baptized with him, to make the lustration com¬ 
plete. So Christ proposes baptism, as the token of that 
lustration, which is to purify such as become citizens in 
the kingdom of heaven. And the conversation of 
Christ with Nicodemus evidently supposes such a rite, 
previously existing and familiarly known by him. 
This being true, all that he says of baptism, or the lus¬ 
tration by water and the Spirit, supposes a baptism also 
of children with their parents, according to the custom. 
The civil regeneration of the proselyte and his family 
by such ceremonies will be answered, in reapplying the 
rite, by the spiritual regeneration of the convert and 
his family. If infants were, in this case, to be excepted, 
or not baptized, the exception required to be expressly 
made; for otherwise, the very transfer of the rite to a 
spiritual use must, of itself, carry infant baptism with it. 
Thus Lightfoot says with great force, “ the Baptists ob¬ 
ject—it is not commanded that infants should be bap¬ 
tized, therefore they should not be baptized. But I 
say it is not prohibited that infants should be baptized, 
therefore they should be baptized; for since the baptism 
of children was familiarly practiced in the admission 
of proselytes, there was no need that it should be con¬ 
firmed by express precept, when baptism come to be 
an evangelical sacrament. For Christ took baptism as 
he found it, and the whole nation knew perfectly well 
that little children had always been baptized. On the 
contrary, if he had intended that the custom should be 


152 


APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 


abolished, be would have expressly prohibited it.” 
Wetstein also says, in the same manner—“ I do not see 
how it could enter into their thoughts to expunge boy? 
and infants from the list of disciples, or from baptism, 
unless they had been excluded by the express injunc¬ 
tion of Christ, which we no where find.”* 

5. Christ comes very near to a specific and formal 
command of infant baptism, when we put together, side 
by side, what he says of baptism in the third chapter 
of John, and what he says concerning infants elsewhere. 
There he recognizes baptism as a token of one’s en¬ 
trance into the kingdom of God; elsewhere he says— 
suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them 
not for of such is the kingdom of heaven. These terms, 
“kingdom of God,” and “kingdom of heaven,” denote, 
externally, the church; and the church is also presented 
under the figure of a school, as here of a kingdom, in 
all those cases where becoming “ a disciple” or learner is 
spoken of. In this latter view or figure, baptism is con¬ 
ceived to be one’s enrollment openly as a disciple; and 
what is more fit than that children should be learners— 
brought in by their parents to be learners with them— 
of the Christian grace ? This, in fact, was the general 
significance of faith in those times; they were called 
believers who so recognized the truth of Christ’s person 
that they were ready to become learners under him. 
And the Baptists themselves act on this same principle, 
never holding the necessity that baptism should actually 


♦This subject of proselyte baptism has been spoken of also in the 
•econd Sermon, and need not be further dwelt upon here. 



OF INFANT BAPTISM. 


153 


follow faith, in the high and complete sense of spiritual 
conversion. Probably half their members, in the 
church, come into doubt, before they die, of the time 
when they were really born of the Spirit; and, in cases 
of open apostasy, where there is a recovery, and the 
disciple openly testifies that he was not before a truly 
converted person, he is not rebaptized. It is enougn 
that, by his baptism, he has openly signified his wish 
to be a disciple in the school of Christ; where, if he 
has never learned before, it is only the more necessary 
that he be a true learner now; which if he become, the 
great law, “ he that believeth and is baptized,” is suffi¬ 
ciently fulfilled. Just so with the child of a Christian 
parentage; whatever doubts may be entertained of his 
certainly growing up in the faith, there is a much bet¬ 
ter presumption that he will, if the parents are faithful, 
than there is, in the case of persons converted from the 
world, that they will prove to be true believers; and if 
he should not grow up in the faith, but afterwards be¬ 
comes a Christian, there is just as much greater pro¬ 
priety in his baptism as an infant, and no more reason 
why he should be rebaptized, than there is in the case 
of apostate professors who become truly converted. 

6. What is said in the Hew Testament of household 
baptism, or the baptizing of households, is positive 
proof that infants were baptized in the times of the 
apostles—baptized, that is, in and because of the sup¬ 
posed faith of the parents. The fact of such baptism 
is three times distinctly mentioned; in the case of “ the 
household of Stephanas,” of Lydia “and her house* 


154 


APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 


hold,” and the jailor “and all his.” In the first case, 
nothing is said of faith at all, though doubtless he was 
baptized as a believer. In the second, • every thing 
turns on the personal faith of Lydia—“if ye have 
judged me to be faithful.” In the third, it seems to be 
said, according to an English translation, that all the 
house believed—“ he rejoiced, believing in God, with 
nil his house.” But the participle, believing, is singu¬ 
lar and not plural in the original, and the phrase— 
“ with all his house”—plainly belongs to the verb and 
not to the participle. Rigidly translated, the passage 
would read—“he rejoiced with all his house, himself 
believing.” 

It is often objected that, in all these three cases, for 
aught that appears, the households were made up of 
adult persons, who were baptized because they all be¬ 
lieved. But the chance that this should be true of the 
only three households said to be baptized, and that 
there should be three households, as households were 
commonly made up in that time, in which there were 
no young children or infants, is not even one in a mil¬ 
lion, as computed by what is called the doctrine of 
chances. Besides, if it was a thing understood that in¬ 
fants were never to be baptized, it is important to ob¬ 
serve that no such way of speaking could ever come 
into use. What Baptist could ever be induced, with 
his view of baptism, to say inclusively, and without 
some kind of qualification, that he had baptized the 
household of Richard or Mary? We need not stop, in 
this view, to ask whether certainly there were infants 


OF INFANT BAPTISM. 


155 


in^any one of these households; the mode of speaking 
itself shows that baptism went by households, and that 
when the head was judged to be faithful, his baptism 
carried the presumptive faith and consequent baptism 
of all. Of this, too, 

7. We have a distinct indication, in what is said of 
children, where but one of the parents believes. Thus 
Paul distinctly teaches, “ For the unbelieving husband 
is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is 
sanctified by the husband; else were your children 
unclean, but now are they holy.” It is not meant here 
that the children are actually and inwardly holy per¬ 
sons, but that only having one Christian parent is enough 
to change their presumptive relations to God; enough 
to make them Christian children, as distinguished from 
the children of unbelievers. So strong is the convic¬ 
tion, even, in these apostolic times, of an organic unity 
sovereign over the faith and the religious affinities of 
children that, where but one parent only believes, that 
faith carries presumptively the faith of the children 
with it. And upon this grand fact of the religious 
economy, baptism was, from the first, and properly, 
applied to the children of them that believe. Hence, 
too— 

8. It was that the children of believers were famil¬ 
iarly addressed with them as believers; as in the epis¬ 
tles of Paul to the Ephesians and Colossians. These 
epistles are formally inscribed to churches or Christian 
brotherhoods—“ to the saints, which are at Ephesus, 
and to the faithful in Christ Jesus”—“to the saints and 


156 


APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 


faithful brethren, which are at Colosse.” And yet in 
both, the children are particularly addressed—“Chil¬ 
dren obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right ”— 
Children obey your parents in all things; for this is 
well pleasing unto the Lord. In this manner, children 
are formally included among the “faithful in Christ 
Jesus.” The conception is that children are, of course, 
included in the religion of their parentage, grow up 
faithful with their faithful or believing parents. On the 
ground of this same presumption, they were properly 
baptized with them, or on their account. Again— 

9. It is a point of consequence to notice that such as 
reject all these and similar evidences from the Scrip¬ 
ture, on the ground that infant baptism can not be 
rightly practiced, because it is not directly and specif] 
cally appointed in the Scripture, do yet make nothing 
of their own argument in other observances familiarly 
accepted. Why infant baptism was not and should not 
be required to have been specifically commanded, I 
have shown already ; how, for example, it was necessa¬ 
rily developed, as from a point distinctly referred to in 
Peter’s first sermon, and how the very institution of 
baptism carried, of necessity, infant baptism with it, 
apart from any express mention. In the meantime, it 
will be found that the objectors themselves are admit¬ 
ting and practicing, without difficulty, observances that 
have comparatively no specific authority at all. At 
the sacrament of the Supper, they use leavened bread 
without scruple, when they know that it was not used 
by Christ himself, and was solemnly forbidden at the 


OF INFANT BAPTISM. 


157 


festival, lie was there, in fact, reappointing for the Chris¬ 
tian uses of his disciples in all future ages. Where 
then is the authority given for a change even in the 
element of the Holy Supper itself? The Christian 
Lord’s day, too, accepted in the place of the Jewish 
Sabbath, and that even against a specific command of 
the decalogue—how readily, and with how little scru¬ 
ple, do they accept this Lord’s day and let the ancient 
Sabbath go, when it is only by the faintest, most equivo¬ 
cal, or evanescent indications they can make out a shad¬ 
ow of authority for the change? “Direct proof! pos¬ 
itive command! specific injunction!” they say, “with¬ 
out these, infant baptism has no right.” Where then 
do they get their authority for these other observances; 
one of them never referred to in Scripture at all, and 
the other so doubtfully that infant baptism has, in com¬ 
parison, the clear evidence of day ? 

Lastly, it remains to glance at the evidences from 
church history, or the history of times subsequent to 
the age of the apostles. It has been the mood of Chris¬ 
tian learning, in the generation past—for the learned 
men have moods and phases, not to say fashions, like 
others in the less thoughtful conditions—to make large 
concessions in the matter of baptism, both as regards 
the manner and the subjects. But a reaction is now 
begun, and it is my fixed conviction that it will not 
stop, till the encouragement heretofore given to the 
Baptist opinions is quite taken away. 

It has never been questioned, however, that infant 
baptism, became the current practice of the church at 

14 


158 APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 

a very early date. It is mentioned, incidentally and 
otherwise, in the writings of the earliest church fathers 
after the age of the apostles. 

Thus it is testified by Justin Martyr, who was prob¬ 
ably born before the death of the apostle John—“ There 
are many of us, of both sexes, some sixty and some 
seventy years old, who were made disciples from their 
childhood.” And the word made disciples is the same 
that Christ himself used when he said, “ Go teach [i. e. 
disciple] all nations, baptizing,” &c.; the same that was 
currently applied to baptized children afterwards. 

Ireneus, born a few years later, writes—“ Christ came 
to redeem all by himself; all who through him are 
regenerated unto God; infants and little children, and 
young men, and older persons. Hence, he passed 
through every age, and for the infants he became an 
infant, sanctifying infants; among the little children, 
he became a little child, sanctifying those who belong 
to this age; and at the same time, presenting them an 
example of well doing, and obedience; among the 
young men he became a young man, that he might set 
them an example, and sanctify them to the Lord.” In 
the phrase, “ regenerated to God,” which is thus applied 
to infants, expressly named as distinguished from little 
children, he refers, it can not be doubted, to baptism; 
which, being the outward sign of such inward grace, 
was naturally and very commonly called regeneration. 
Infants plainly could be regenerated to God in no other 
sense ; and therefore his language can not even be sup* 
posed to have any meaning, if this be rejected. 


OF INFANT BAPTISM. 


159 


Tertullian follows, urging the delay of baptism, and, in 
fact, advocating the disuse of infant baptism altogether. 
But bis appeal supposes the current practice of such 
baptism at the time, and in that way rather augments 
than diminishes the weight of historic evidence. And 
the more so that he urges the delay of baptism on 
grounds that are false and even superstitious, viz.: that 
baptism carries the forgiveness of sins, and should 
therefore be postponed to a later period, because the 
sins committed after baptism must otherwise be cleared 
by a more purgatorial method. 

Origen, who was born near the close of the second 
century, or about a hundred years after the time of the 
apostles, testifies—“According to the usage of the 
church, baptism is given to infants.” And again—“ The 
church received an order from the apostles to baptize 
infants.” 

Somewhere in these first two centuries, the ancient 
writing called the “Shepherd,” or the “Shepherd of 
Hermas,” because it purports to have been written by a 
teacher of that name, declares the opinion that—“All 
infants are in honor with the Lord, and are esteemed 
first of all—the baptism of water is necessary to all ” 
Who this Hermas was, and when he lived, is not ascer¬ 
tained, but he is supposed by many to be the very same 
person mentioned by Paul, Eom. xvi. 14. He is ac¬ 
knowledged by Neander, as one who “ had great author¬ 
ity in the first centuries.” 

It is a remarkable evidence, too, that inscriptions are 
found on the monuments of children, considered by 


160 


APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 


antiquarians to be of a very early age, probably of the 
first two or three centuries, in which they are called 
fideles , that is ’faithfuls ; just as children are addressed by 
Paul among the “faithful brethren” of Ephesus and 
Colosse. The following is an example—(Buonarotti, 
17 Fabretti, Cap. 4,) “A faithful among faithfuls, here 
]ies Zosimus. He lived two years one month and 
twenty-five days.” How far they carried the presump¬ 
tion of infant baptism, that children are to grow up in 
the grace of their parents, is here seen. 

It signifies little, therefore, as respects this question, 
after the authorities cited, that the Bishops of the North 
African Church, in a council called by Cyprian, about the 
middle of the third century, decided that baptism should 
not of course be delayed for eight days, according to 
the law of circumcision, which many supposed to gov¬ 
ern the rite. 

So clear, in short, and decided was the authority of 
infant baptism, that Pelagius, a man of great learning, 
who had traveled in Britain, France, Italy, Africa 
Proper, Egypt, and Palestine, declared, in his contro¬ 
versy with Augustine, about the beginning of the fifth 
century, that “he had never heard of any impious 
heretic or sectary, who had denied infant baptism.” 
“ What,” he also asked, “ can be so impious as to hinder 
the baptism of infants ?” 

Augustine himself also testifies—“ The whole church 
of Christ has constantly held that infants were baptized. 
Infant baptism the whole church practices. It was not 
instituted by councils, but was ever in use.” 


OF INFANT BAPTISM. 


161 


Infant baptism, therefore, is a fact of church history 
not to be fairly questioned. And accordingly the ar¬ 
gument may be summed up thus: beginning at a point 
previous, we find customs and associations that would 
almost certainly be issued in such a rite of family relig¬ 
ion; in the discourses of Christ and the apostolical 
writings we find that it actually was; and then we find 
the facts of church history correspondent. On the 
whole, while it may be admitted that baptism itself is a 
little more positively authenticated, it can not be denied 
that infant baptism is authenticated by all sufficient 
evidence. 


14 * 


VII. 

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP OF CHILDREN. 

« To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse.”—• 
Colosdans , i. 2. 

These “ saints and faithful brethren,” it will be seen, 
include young children; for the apostle makes a distri¬ 
bution of them afterwards, in the third chapter of the 
epistle, addressing the class of wives, the class of hus¬ 
bands, the class of fathers, the class of servants, the 
class of masters, and, among all these, the class of chil¬ 
dren—“ Children obey your parents in all things; for 
this is well pleasing unto the Lord.” The Epistle to the 
Ephesians, too, is inscribed, in the same way—“ to the 
saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in 
Christ;” and this, again, makes a like distribution; 
addressing the classes of husbands, wives, fathers, moth 
ers, children, servants, and masters, all as being in¬ 
cluded in the church at Ephesus—“children obey your 
parents in the Lord; for this is right. Honor thy 
father and mother; for this is the first commandment 
with promise.” Where also it is made clear that he is 
speaking to quite young children; for he turns imme 
diately to the fathers, exhorting them to bring up their 
ohildren in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP. 


163 


They are children so young, therefore, as to be subjects 
of nurture, and yet are addressed among the faithful 
brethren. 

The explanation, then, is not that such children were 
believers, in the sense of being converts entered into 
the fold by an adult experience, and distinguished from 
other children not thus converted. When Lydia 
speaks of herself as one adjudged to be “faithful,” it is 
probably in this sense. But when Titus, in ordaining 
elders, is directed to choose such as have “faithful 
children, not accused of riot, or unruly,” it would be 
very singular, if he was permitted to ordain only such 
as have all their children thus formally converted. 
Paul obviously means that the elders shall be such 
as are under no scandal on account of their fami¬ 
lies ; whose children are growing up in the Christian 
way and grace; sober, well-behaved, hopefully Chris¬ 
tian children. We can see, too, in the language em¬ 
ployed, that Paul includes the Colossian and Ephesian 
children among the faithful brethren of the two cities, 
in this more presumptive or merely anticipative way. 
For when he says, “ children obey your parents in the 
Lord,” it is not “children in the Lord,” or “children 
obey in the Lord, your parents,” but it is “ obey them 
who are parents in the Lord;” as if their very parent¬ 
age itself, in the flesh, were a parentage also in the 
Spirit, communicating both a personal and a Christian 
life. So, also, when the parents are required to give a 
nurture in the Lord, we may see that the children are 
expected to be grown as saints and faithfuls, and to be 


164 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


presumptively in tlie Lord, apart from all expectations 
and processes of adult conversion. 

And it was out of such uses that the term “ faithful ' 1 
grew into the peculiar kind of church use, in which it 
denotes all the supposed members of the Christian body, 
whether adults, or only baptized children; as, for ex¬ 
ample, in that very ancient inscription cited by Buona- 
rotti, where the child “two years, one month, and 
twenty-five days old,” is described as lying among his 
Christian kinsmen—“a faithful among faithfuls.” The 
very language supposes a membership in the church, 
or among the faithful brethren, by virtue of baptism 
and mere Christian nurture; such as on the footing of 
strict individualism, held by our Baptist brethren, could 
never even be thought of. 

What I propose then, at the present time, is a full 
and careful discussion of this great subject, the church 
membership of baptized children. 

And as it has fallen out, in the extreme individualism 
of our modern era, that multitudes are unable to con¬ 
ceive it as being any thing less than a kind of absurdity, 
or self-evident monstrosity, I shall be obliged to show 
the nature and kind of this membership. 

As it is very commonly disrespected on the ground 
of its practical insignificance, I must also show the rea¬ 
sons why it should exist. 

And then, since it is to the same extent, disowned as 
a rightful part of the true church economy, I must also 
establish the fact of its existence. 


OF CHILDREN. 165 

I. I am to show the nature and extent of this mem¬ 
bership. 

All those classes of Christian disciples who practice 
infant baptism conceive it, of course, to have a certain 
common character with adult baptism, and so to create 
a supposed, or somehow supposable membership in the 
church. And yet they often have it as a question, sup¬ 
pressed, or openly put without satisfaction—“ who is a 
member of Christ’s body, but one who is able to act 
and choose for himself, and in that manner to believe ?” 
Many preachers, too, quite pass over the fact of any 
assignable reality in this relationship, publishing a call 
of salvation that practically ignores it as having any 
meaning at all; addressing young persons and children 
who have been baptized, in a way that as steadily and 
unqualifiedly assumes their unregenerate state, as if they 
were the children of heathenism. The opposers of 
infant baptism are bolder and more positive, of course, 
insisting always on the manifest absurdity of this 
nondescript, unintelligible, unintelligent membership; 
which makes a child a church member, not to be a 
voter nor a subject of discipline; which puts the initia¬ 
tory rite of faith upon him, when he does not believe 
any thing, or even know that there is any to believe; 
creating thus a membership that has no rational mean¬ 
ing and no sound verity, but supposes a faith that does 
not exist, and constitutes a relationship that brings into 
no relation. 

What, then, is this infant membership? what concep¬ 
tion can we take of it, which will justify its Christian 


166 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


dignity ? A great many persons who are very sharp at 
this kind of criticism, appear to have never observed 
that creatures existing under conditions of growth, allow 
no such terms of classification as those do which are 
dead, and have no growth; such, for example, as 
stones, metals, and earths. They are certain that gold 
is not iron, and iron is not silver, and they suppose that 
they can class the growing and transitional creatures, 
that are separated by no absolute lines, in the same man¬ 
ner. They talk of colts and horses, lambs and sheep, 
and it, possibly, not once occurs to them, that they can 
never tell when the colt becomes a horse, or the lamb 
a sheep; and that about the most definite thing they 
can say, when pressed with that question, is that the 
colt is potentially a horse, the lamb a sheep, even from 
the first, having in itself this definite futurition; and, 
therefore, that, while horses and sheep are not all to be 
classed as colts and lambs, all colts and lambs may bo 
classed as horses and sheep. And just so children are 
all men and women; and, if there is any law of futurition 
in them to justify it, may be fitly classed as believing 
men and women. And all the sharp arguments that 
go to cover their membership, as such, in the church, 
with absurdity, or turn it into derision, are just such 
arguments as the inventors could raise with equal point, 
to ridicule the horsehood and sheephood of the young 
animals just referred to. The propriety of this mem¬ 
bership does not lie in what those infants can or can not 
believe, or do or do not believe, at some given time, 
as, for example, on the day of their baptism; but it lies 


OF CHILDREN. 


167 


in the covenant of promise, which makes their parents, 
parents in the Lord; their nurture, a nurture of the 
Lord; and so constitutes a force of futurition by which 
they are to grow up, imperceptibly, into “faithfuls 
among faithfuls,” in Christ Jesus. Perhaps no one can 
tell when they become such, and it may be that some 
initiating touch of grace began to work inductively in 
them, by a process too delicate for human observation, 
even from their earliest infancy, or from their baptismal 
day. For there is a nurture of grace, as well as a grace 
of conversion; that for childhood, as this for the age 
of maturity, and one as sure and genuine as the other. 

The conception, then, of this membership is, that it 
is a potentially real one; that it stands, for the present, 
in the faith of the parents and the promise which is to 
them and to their children, and that, on this ground, 
they may well enough be accounted believers, just as 
they are accounted potentially men and women. Then, 
as they come forward into maturity, it is to be assumed 
that they will come forward into faith, being grown in 
the nurture of faith, and will claim for themselves, the 
membership, into which they were before inserted. 

Nor is this a case which has no analogies, that it 
should be held up as a mark of derision. It is gene¬ 
rally supposed that our common law has some basis of 
common sense. And yet this body of law makes every 
infant child a citizen; requiring, as a point of public 
order, the whole constabulary and even military force 
of the state to come to the rescue, or the redress of his 
wrongs, when his person is seized or property invaded 


168 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


by conspiracy. This infant child can sue and be sued; 
for the court of chancery will appoint him a guardian, 
whose acts shall be the child’s acts; and it shall be as 
if he were answering for his own education, dress, 
board, entertainments, and the damages done by his 
servants, precisely as if he were a man acting in his 
own cause. Doubtless it may sound very absurdly to 
call him a citizen. What can he do as a citizen ? He 
can not vote, nor bear arms; he does not even know 
what these things mean, and yet he is a citizen. In one 
view, he votes, bears arms, legislates, even in his cra¬ 
dle ; for the potentiality is in him, and the state takes 
him up in her arms, as it were, to own him as her 
citizen. 

In a strongly related sense, it is, that the baptized 
child is a believer and a member of the church. There 
is no unreality in the position assigned him; for the 
futurition of God’s promise is in him, and, by a kind 
of sublime anticipation, he is accepted in God’s super¬ 
natural economy as a believer; even as the law accepts 
him, in the economy of society, to be a citizen. He is 
potentially both, and both is actually to be, in a way 
of transition so subtle and imperceptible that no one 
can tell, when he begins to be, either one, or the other. 

Hor is it any objection that there might be some dif¬ 
ficulty in the exercise of a regular church discipline 
over baptized children; or that, if this can not be done, 
they are really not church members in any sense that 
ought to be implied in the terms. Is then a child no 
citizen, because he is not held responsible in the law 


OF CHILDREN. 


169 


in precisely the same manner as adults; responsible, in 
a private action, for slander; or responsible, in a pub¬ 
lic, for murder and treason ? The church membership 
is, of course, to be qualified and shaded by the grada¬ 
tions of age; just as the law contrives to shade the 
progress of the citizen child into the citizen man. All 
the logical or theological bantering we hear, therefore, 
on one side or the other, showing that the child, being 
a church member, ought to be held subject to discipline; 
or, if he is not held subject to discipline, that he is 
really no church member, is without reason or any 
proper show of practical dignity. 

It was proposed— 

II. To show the reasons why this relation of infant 
membership should exist, or be appointed. And here 
it is very obvious— 

First of all, that, if there is really no place in the 
church of God for infant children, then it must be said, 
and formally maintained, that there is none. And what 
could be worse in its effect on a child’s feeling, than to 
find himself repelled from the brotherhood of God’s 
elect, in that manner. What can the hapless creature 
think, either of himself or of God, when he is told that 
he is not old enough to be a Christian, or be owned by 
the Saviour as a disciple ? 

Again, it would be most remarkable, if Christianity, 
organizing a fold of grace and love, in the world and 
for it, had yet no place in the fold for children. It 
spreads its arms to say—“ For God so loved the world,” 
15 


170 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


and even declares that publicans and harlots shall flock 
in, before the captious priests and princes of the day, 
and }^et it has no place, we are told, for children; chil¬ 
dren are out of the category of grace! Jesus himself 
was a child, and went through all the phases and con¬ 
ditions of childhood, not to show any thing by that 
fact, as the Christian Fathers fondly supposed; he said, 
too, “ Suffer little children,” but this was only his hu¬ 
man feeling; he had no official relationship to such, 
and no particular grace for them! They are all outside 
the salvation-fold, hardening there in the storm, till 
their choosing, refusing, desiring, sinning power is suf¬ 
ficiently unfolded to have a place assigned them within! 
Is this Christianity ? Is it a preparation so clumsy, so 
little human, so imperfectly graduated to man as he is, 
that it has no place for a full sixth part of the human 
race; a part also to which the other five-sixths are 
bound, in the dearest ties of love and care, and all but 
compulsory expectation ? It would seem that any Chris¬ 
tian heart, meeting Christianity at this point, and sur¬ 
veying it with only a little natural feeling, would even 
be oppressed by the sense of some strange defect in it, 
as a grace for the world. In this view it gives to little 
children the heritage only of Cain, requiring them to 
be driven out from the presence of the Lord, and grow 
up there among the outside crew of aliens and ene¬ 
mies. Let no one be surprized that, under such treat¬ 
ment, they stiffen into alienated, wrathful men, ripened 
for wickedness, by the ranges of all but reprobate ex¬ 
clusion in which they have been classed. 


OF CHILDREN. 


171 


Nor, again, is it any breacli on their liberty, that chil¬ 
dren are entered into this qualified membership by 
their parents. What is it but a being entered into 
privilege ? Is it a hard thing for human parents to 
enter their child into the lot of wealth and high 
society, and a station of family dignity, because it 
does not leave them to acquire the wealth and the posi¬ 
tion of honor in society, by their own original exertion, 
unassisted? When the order of the Cincinnati took 
their sons into the grand society of revolutionary honor 
with them, was it a breach on the liberty of the chil¬ 
dren ? Or we may take another view of the question. 
The church of God is a school, and the members 
are disciples, or learners. Does not every parent 
choose the school for his children, giving them no 
choice in the matter, and taking it to be his own 
unquestionable right? This, too, on the ground that 
they are to have the benefit of his maturer judgment, 
and his more competent choice. Where then is the 
encroachment, when Christian parents baptize their 
child into the same discipleship with themselves, and 
set it in the school of Christ ? It is only a part of their 
ordinary charge as parents, for it is given them to have 
the child in their own character, so to speak, and be 
themselves discipled with it and for it, (and why not it 
with them ?) in all the honors and hopes of the heav¬ 
enly kingdom. 

Consider again the remarkable and certainly painful 
fact that, in the view which excludes infant baptism and 
tho discipleship of children, the conversion itself of a 


172 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


parent operates a kind of dissolution in the family state, 
than which nothing could be more unnatural. It is 
much as if our process of naturalization in the state, 
were to naturalize the parents and not the children; 
leaving these to be foreigners still, and aliens. God’s 
effectual calling is no such unnatural grace; it will 
never call the parents away from the children; to be 
themselves included in the great family of salvation, 
and look out, in their joy, to see their children fenced 
away! No—“ The promise is to you and to your chil¬ 
dren;” not, to you without your children. Come in 
hither, then, ye guilty families of man, parents to be 
parents in the Lord, children to obey in the Lord, all 
to be circled by the common grace of life and the com¬ 
mon fellowship of the saints. Why should we think 
that our Great Father who has been refusing, ever since 
the world began, to so much as put into any bird of the 
air, an instinct that will draw it away from its nest, 
may yet, as a matter of celestial mercy, be engaged by 
his Spirit, in the gathering of human parents away 
from their young! 

It is a matter, too, of great consequence to parents, as 
respects their own fidelity in their office, that their chil¬ 
dren are not put away, by the Saviour, to hold rank 
with heathens outside of the fold, but are brought in 
with them, to be heirs together with them in the grace 
of life. What will justify, or will naturally produce, a 
more sullen remissness of duty in parents, than to feel 
that, for the present, God has shut away, and is holding 
away their children, and that they are never to be dis- 


OF CHILDREN. 


173 


ciples of the fold, till after they have been passed round 
into it, through long detours of estrangement and ripen- 
ing guiltiness? If there is nothing better for them 
than to be converted just as heathens are, why should 
they, as parents, be greatly concerned for their own ex¬ 
ample, and the faithfulness of their training, when the 
conversion is to be every thing and will have power to 
remedy every defect ? 

How refreshing the contrast, when the children, giv¬ 
en to God in baptism, are accounted members of the 
church with them, as being included in their faith, and 
having the seal of it upon them. They look upon it 
now as their privilege to be parents in the Lord. Their 
prayers, they understand, are to keep heaven open upon 
their house. Their aims are to be Christian. Their 
tastes and manners to be flavored by the Christian hope 
in which they live. There is to be a quickening ele¬ 
ment in the atmosphere they make. They will set all 
things upon a Christian footing for their children’s sake; 
and their children, growing up in such nurture of the 
Lord, will, how certainly, unfold what their nurture 
itself has quickened. 

It is still another consideration, that the church itself, 
having this infant membership in it, will unfold other 
aims and tempers, and exert a finer quality of power. 
It will not be a dry convention of simply grown up 
men and women; the men will, some of them, be fath¬ 
ers, the women mothers, and the children being also 
gathered with them in the fold, they will all be gentled 
together by the tender brotherhood of the little ones. 
15 * 


174 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


The parents will learn from the children quite as much 
as they teach, and will do their teaching fitly, just be¬ 
cause they learn. The church prayers will have a cer¬ 
tain paternity and maternity in them, and the children 
will feel the grace of these prayers warming always 
round them. Even the church life itself, two, or three, 
or more, generations deep, wfill be qualified by the grand¬ 
father and grandmother spirit, and the father and 
mother spirit, and the reverent manners of the little 
ones, and the whole volume of religious life will be un¬ 
folded thus, by taking into itself the whole volume of 
nature and family feeling. 

Such are some of the reasons, briefly and faintly 
presented, which determine, as I conceive, God’s ap¬ 
pointment of the great fact of an infant membership in 
his church. And yet the reasons, taken by themselves, 
are hardly a sufficient evidence of the fact. They set 
us in the mood of respect, and even put us in the ex¬ 
pectation of it, but they leave the inquiry still upon our 
hands— 

III. Whether the supposed infant membership is a 
real and true fact? That it is, may be seen from the 
following proofs:— 

1. Those declarations of Scripture which assert or 
assume the fact. Thus, when the Saviour commands— 
“ Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them 
not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” it would be 
very singular if they could not come in with the disci¬ 
ples, when they may so freely come to the Master him- 


OF CHILDREN. 


175 


self. And if Christ had been calling his disciples 
themselves into fraternity with him, what more conld 
he have said for them, than that of such is the king¬ 
dom of heaven? Nor is it any objection, as respects the 
children, that, except a man be born again, he can not 
be entered into this kingdom; for potentially, at least, 
they are thus born again; and so are as fitly to be 
counted citizens of the kingdom, as they are to be citi¬ 
zens of the state. Besides, there is still less in that 
kind of objection, that the kingdom of God, taken in its 
lower sense as identical with the church, is expressly 
likened by the Saviour to a net that gathers of every 
kind. And what again does it signify, as regards the 
apostolic ideas of this matter of infant membership, that 
the great apostle to the Gentiles, in at least two of his 
epistles to Christian churches, addresses, directly, chil¬ 
dren, as being included among the saints and faithful in 
Christ Jesus ? I allege as proof, 

2. The analogy of circumcision. This was given to 
be the seal of faith, and the church token, in that man¬ 
ner, of a godly seed. Baptism can certainly be the 
same with as little difficulty, or as little charge of ab¬ 
surdity. True, they were not all Israel that were of 
Israel, and so all may not be Israel that are baptized. 
Enough that God gives the possibility, in both cases, in 
giving the rite itself; and then it is to be seen, whether 
the parents will be parents in the Lord, as it is for¬ 
mally permitted them to be. Let the true point here 
be carefully observed; • some kind of presumption must 
be given by God, in respect to the church position of 


176 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


children; for they must either be taken into the church, 
or else they must be excluded till they are old enough 
to be admitted on the ground of a religious experience— 
there is no other alternative. If they are excluded, 
then it is taken for granted, that they are to grow up 
as unbelievers and aliens, which is only their public 
consignment to evil. If they are taken to be in the 
faith, presumptively, as in the nurture of their parents, 
and so accepted, then every kind encouragement is 
given to them, and every pledge of divine help is gra¬ 
ciously given to their parents. Which of the two meth¬ 
ods is most consonant to nature, and worthiest of 
God’s beneficence, it is not difficult to see. God, on his 
part, gives no presumption, either to the parents or their 
child, that he is to be only a transgressor and alien, but 
he gives the seal of the faith, as a pledge, to raise their 
expectation of what he will do for them, and to throw 
the blame of a godless childhood and youth, if such 
there is to be, on themselves. 

3. The church connection of children is virtually as¬ 
sumed, as we may see, by the apostle Paul, when he 
teaches that the believing wife sanctifies the unbelieving 
husband, and the believing husband the unbelieving 
wife—“ else were your children unclean, but now are 
they holy.” He refers, in this matter, it is plain, 
to the effect of a parental faith, on the church position 
of children. He does not, of course, use the term 
“ sanctify ,” in any spiritual sense, as affirming the regen¬ 
eration of character in the children; but he alludes 
only to the church ideas of clean and unclean, affirming 


OF CHILDREN. 


177 


that the unclean state of a godless father, or mother, is 
so far taken away by the clean state of a godly mother, 
or father, that the children are accounted clean, or 
holy—so far holy, that is, that they are of the fold, and 
not aliens, or unclean foreigners without the fold, as the 
Jews were accustomed to regard all the uncircumcised 
races. One believing parent, he declares, puts the chil¬ 
dren in the church classification of believers. 

4. All the reasons I have given for the observance 
of infant baptism, go to establish also the fact of in¬ 
fant membership in the church. And this holds good, 
especially of that which discovers the origin of the rite 
in proselyte baptism. For as foreigners, becoming pros¬ 
elytes, were baptized and so made clean, thus to be ac¬ 
counted natural born citizens, so Christ, reapplying the 
rite to a spiritual use, makes it the token of that regen¬ 
eration which enters the soul into his heavenly king¬ 
dom, and gives a divine citizenship there. In which 
you may see how my comparison of infant membership 
in the church, to the well-known citizenship of infants 
in the state, is borne out by Christian authority itself. 
Their very baptism is the figure of their citizenship; 
wherein they are shown to be “fellow-citizens of the 
saints, and of the household of God.” 

Now it is to be conceded, as respects all these proofs 
from the Scripture, that the church membership of chil¬ 
dren is not formally asserted in them. According to 
a certain coarse way of judging, therefore, they are not 
as strong as they might be. And yet, in a more per¬ 
ceptive and really truer mode of judgment, they lack 


178 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


that kind of strength just because they have too much 
of another, which is deeper and more satisfactory, to 
suffer it. So familiar is the idea, to all Jewish minds, 
of a religious oneness in parents and their offspring, 
that a church institution of any kind, arranged to in¬ 
clude parents and not their offspring, would even have 
been a shocking offense to the nation. Children were 
as much expected to be with their parents in their 
religion, as they were to be in their sustentation. Does 
any one doubt that children were citizens in the old 
theocracy ? And yet I recollect no passage where that 
sort of membership with their parents is instituted, or 
formally asserted. And the reason, is that it is a fact 
too familiar, too close to the sentiment or sense of na 
ture, to be asserted. "We can even see for ourselves 
that they look upon religious faith itself as a kind of 
hereditament in the family, descending on the child by 
laws of family connexion, where it is not hindered by 
some bad fault in the manners and walk of the parents. 
Thus we hear even Paul himself, the man who knew 
as well as any other, and taught as powerfully, the sig¬ 
nificance of Christian faith, addressing his young brother 
Timothy, as having the greater confidence in his faith 
because it is hereditary—“ When I call to remembrance 
the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in 
thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice, and I 
am persuaded that in thee also.” This unfeigned, this 
certainly true Christian faith, he conceives to have even 
leapt the gulf between the old religion and the new, 
and so to have come down upon him, through at 


OF CHILDREN. 


179 


least two generations of godly motherhood under the 
law and before the coming of Jesus. When such no¬ 
tions of family grace are familiar, what does it signify 
that the church membership of children is not formally 
asserted? How could that be instituted by an apos¬ 
tolic decree, which no apostle, or man, or woman, had 
ever thought could be otherwise ? 

Over and above these more direct evidences, for the 
church membership of baptized children, there is still 
another kind of evidence to be adduced, which has, and 
very properly should have, much weight. I allude to 
the opinions of the church and her most qualified 
teachers, from the apostolic era downward. In one 
sense, the mere opinions of men regarding such a ques¬ 
tion are of little consequence. But where they coin¬ 
cide with the known practice of the church from the 
earliest times downward, and show the practice to be 
grounded in the same reasons of organic unity and 
presumptive grace that we are now asserting, they 
both show that our doctrine is no novelty, and con¬ 
tribute a powerful evidence in support of its original 
authenticity. 

Thus I have cited already in support of infant bap¬ 
tism, passages from Justin Martyr, Ireneus, Tertullian, 
Origen, the Shepherd of Hermas, and others, which not 
only show the fact of infant baptism, but discover also, 
in their phraseology, the same views of church mem¬ 
bership that I am now asserting. This whole view of 
infant membership, as it stood in the first three centu- 


180 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


ries of the church history, appears to be well summed 
up, both as regards the facts and the reasons, in the 
following statement of Neander:— 

“ It is the idea of infant baptism that Christ, through 
the divine life which he imparted to, and revealed in, 
human nature, sanctified that germ from its earliest de¬ 
velopment. The child born in a Christian family was, 
when all things were as they should be, to have this 
advantage over others, that he did not come to Chris¬ 
tianity out of heathenism or the sinful natural life, but 
from the first dawning of consciousness unfolded his 
powers under the imperceptible, preventing influences 
of a sanctifying, ennobling religion; that with the 
earliest germinations of the natural self-conscious life, 
another divine principle of life, transforming the nature, 
should be brought nigh to him, ere yet the ungodly 
principle could come into full activity, and the latter 
should, at once, find here its powerful counterpoise. 
In such a life, the new birth was not to constitute a new 
crisis, beginning at some definable moment, but it was 
to begin imperceptibly, and so proceed through the 
whole life. Hence baptism, the visible sign of regen¬ 
eration, was to be given to the child at the very outset: 
the child was to be consecrated to the Eedeemer from 
the very beginning of its life.”* 

A more popular and practical view of Christianity, 
as seen in the domestic life of families, and one, at the 
same time, wholly coincident, is given by Cave:— 

“ Gregory Nazianzen peculiarly commends his mother, 


* Neander’s Church History, Torrey’s translation, pp. 311, 312. 



OF CHILDREN. 


181 


that not only she herself was consecrated to God, and 
brought up under a pious education, but that she con¬ 
veyed it down, as a necessary inheritance, to her chil¬ 
dren ; and it seems her daughter Gorgonia was so well 
seasoned with these holy principles, that she religiously 
walked in the steps of so good a pattern ; and did not 
only reclaim her husband, but educated her children 
and nephews in the ways of religion, giving them an 
excellent example while she lived, and leaving this, as 
her last charge and request when she died. * * * 

This was the discipline under which Christians were 
brought up in those times. Religion was instilled into 
them betimes, which grew up and mixed itself with 
their ordinary labors and recreations. * * * * g 0 

that Jerome says, of the place where he lived, you 
could not go into the field, but you might hear the 
plowman at his hallelujahs, the mower at his hymns, 
and the vine-dresser singing David’s Psalms.”* 

I can not answer for an exact agreement of my doc¬ 
trine with that of Calvin. It must be sufficient that he 
recognizes the valid possibility of a regenerate charac¬ 
ter, existing long before it is formally developed, and 
the propriety of infant baptism as the initiatory rite of 
membership. He says:— 

“ Christ was sanctified from his earliest infancy, that 
he might sanctify in himself all his elect. But how, it 
is inquired, are infants regenerated who have no knowl¬ 
edge either of good or evil ? We reply that the work 
of God is not yet without existence because it is not 


* Primitive Christianity, pp. 173, 174. 

16 



182 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


observed or understood by us. Now it is certain 
that some infants are saved, and that they are pre¬ 
viously regenerated by the Lord is beyond all doubt. 
They are baptized into future repentance and faith; 
for though these graces have not yet been formed in 
them, the seeds of both are nevertheless implanted in 
their hearts by the secret operations of the Spirit.’ 7 * 

The mercurial mind of Baxter penetrates directly 
into all the subtleties of the question, asserting the or¬ 
ganic unity of children who stand accepted in the cove¬ 
nant of their fathers; showing how regenerate charac¬ 
ter is to begin, seminally, in the children of them that 
believe, and get the start of sin by a kind of gracious 
anticipation; and so that, in this view, nurture and 
growth are God’s way of unfolding grace in the church, 
as preaching and conversion are his method of grace 
with them that are without. Which three points are 
successively asserted in the following passages:— 

“ Q .—Why then are they baptized who can not 
covenant ? 

“A .—As children are made sinners and miserable by 
the parents, without any act of their own, so they are 
delivered out of it by the free grace of Christ, upon a 
condition performed by their parents. Else they who 
are visibly born in sin and misery should have no cer¬ 
tain or visible way of remedy. Nature maketh them, 
as it were, parts of their parents, or so near as causeth 
their sin and misery. And this nearness supposed, 
God, by his free grace, hath put it in the power of the 


* Ins. cap. xvi. § 17, 18, 20. 




OF CHILDREN. 


183 


parents to accept for them the blessings of the cove¬ 
nant, and to enter them into the covenant of God, the 
parents’ will being instead of their own, who have yet 
no will to choose for themselves.”* 

“Of those baptized in infancy, some do betimes 
receive the secret seeds of grace, which, by the bless¬ 
ings of a holy education, is stirring in them according 
to their capacity, and working them to God by actual 
desires, and working them from all known sin, and 
entertaining further grace, and turning them into actual 
acquaintance with Christ, as soon as they arrive at full 
natural capacity, so that they never were actual ungodly 
persons.”! 

“ Ungodly parents do serve the devil so effectually, 
in the first impressions on their children’s minds, that 
it is more than magistrates and ministers and all reform¬ 
ing means can afterwards do to recover them from that 
sin to God. Whereas, if you would first engage their 
hearts to God by a religious education, piety would then 
have all those advantages that sin hath now. (Prov. 
xxii. 6.) The language which you teach them to speak 
when they are children, they will use all their life after, 
if they live with those that use it. And so the opinions 
which they first receive, and the customs which they 
are used to at first are very hardly changed afterwards. 
I doubt not to affirm, that a godly education is God’s first 
and ordinary appointed means, for the begetting of actual 
faith and other graces in the children of believers. Many 


* Teacher of Householders, foL, vol. ii., p. 135. 
f Confirmation, foL, vol. iv., p. 261. 



184 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


have received grace before; but they can not sooner have 
actual faith, repentance, love, or any grace than they may 
have reason itself, in act and exercise* And the preach¬ 
ing of the word by public ministers, is not the first 
ordinary means of grace, to any but those that were 
graceless till they come to hear such preaching; that 
is, to those on whom the first appointed means hath 
been neglected or proved vain; * * * * there¬ 

fore it is apparent that the ordinary appointed means 
for the first actual grace, is parents’ godly instruction and 
education of their children. And public preaching is 
appointed for the conversion of those only that have 
missed the blessing of the first appointed means.”* 

Our New England fathers, coming out as they did 
from a mode of church economy which made Chris¬ 
tian piety itself to be scarcely more than baptism, and 
passing through great struggles to settle a scheme of 
church order that should recognize the strict individual¬ 
ity of persons, and the essential personality of spiritual 
regeneration, fell off for a time, as they naturally might, 
into a denial of the great underlying principles and facts 
on which the membership of baptized children in the 
church must ever be rested. In the Cambridge Plat¬ 
form of 1649, they asserted a view of membership, by 
which it was to be rigidly confined to such as appear to 
be renewed persons. Meantime none were allowed to 
be qualified as voters in the commonwealth, except in 
the Hartford and Providence colonies, who were not 
members of the church—the same principle with which 


* Christian Directory, vol. il, cap. 6, § 4, fol. p. 616. 



OF CHILDREN. 


185 


tliey had been familiar in England. The result was, 
under their individualizing scheme of membership, 
that they began to find, as soon as their sons were 
grown to manhood, that many of them, even though 
baptized, were, in fact, aliens in the state. They 
could not vote in the state, and, having no pretense of 
faith, could not baptize their children, not being in the 
church themselves. Another synod was convened 
A. D. 1662, to find some way of relieving these difficul¬ 
ties. And they hit upon the rather strange expedient 
of a half-membership, allowing all baptized persons 
who live reputably, and give a speculative assent to the 
gospel, to be so far members that they may be voters 
and have their children baptized. This decision was 
stoutly opposed by some of the ablest men in the synod, 
and great debates followed. And yet as the facts were 
reported by Cotton Mather, these three positions were 
asserted and agreed to on all hands—even though the 
scheme adopted had no systematic and practical agree¬ 
ment with them, or ground of reason in them. 

1. That the children of Christian parents, trained in 
a Christian way, often grow up as spiritually renewed 
persons, and must indeed be accounted true disciples 
of Christ, until some evidence conclusive to the con¬ 
trary is given by their conduct. 

11 Children of the covenant have frequently the begin¬ 
ning of grace wrought in them in younger years, as 
Scripture and experience show. Instance Joseph, Sam¬ 
uel, David, Solomon, Abijah, Josiah, Daniel, John 
Baptist, Timothy. Hence this sort of persons, [bap- 
16* 


186 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


tized persons] showing nothing to the contrary, are, in 
charity, or to ecclesiastical reputation, visible believers.”* 

2. That baptism supposes an initial state of piety, or 
some right beginning, in which the child is prepared 
unto good, by causes prior to his own will. 

“We are to distinguish between faith and the hope¬ 
ful beginning of it, the charitable judgment whereof 
runs upon a great latitude, and faith in the special exer¬ 
cise of it, unto the visible discovery whereof, more ex¬ 
perienced operations are to be inquired after. The 
words of Dr. Ames are: 1 Children are not to be ad¬ 
mitted to partake of all church privileges, till first 
increase of faith do appear, but from those which belong 
to the beginning of faith and entrance into the church 
they are not to be excluded.’ ”* 

3. That there is a kind of individualism which runs 
only to evil; that the church is designed to be an or¬ 
ganic, vital, grace-giving power, and thus a nursery of 
spiritual life to its children. 

“ The way of the Anabaptists, to admit none to mem¬ 
bership and baptism but adult professors, is the straitest 
way; one would think it should be a way of great 
purity; but experience hath shewed that it has been an 
inlet unto great corruption. If we do not keep in the 
way of a converting , grace-giving covenant , and keep per¬ 
sons under those church dispensations wherein grace is 
given, the church will die of a lingering though not 
violent death. The Lord hath not set up churches only 
that a few old Christians may keep one another warm 


* Magnalia, book v., fol. p. 72. f Magnalia, book v., fol. p. 77. 



OF CHILDREN. 


187 


while they live, and then carry away the church with 
them when they die; no, but that they might with all 
care, and with all the obligations and advantages to that 
care that may be, nurse still successively another gen¬ 
eration of subjects to our Lord, that may stand up in 
his kingdom when they are gone.”* 

Under this half-way covenant, and probably in part 
because of it, practical religion fell into a state of great 
debility. The churches lost their spirituality, and had 
well nigh lost the idea of spiritual life itself; when at 
length the Great Kevival, under Whitfield and Ed¬ 
wards, inaugurated and brought up to its highest in¬ 
tensity the new era of individualism—the same over¬ 
wrought, misapplied scheme of personal experience in 
religion, which has continued with some modifications 
to the present day. It is a religion that begins explo¬ 
sively, raises high frames, carries little or no expansion, 
and after the campaign is over, subsides into a torpor. 
Considered, as a distinct era, introduced by Edwards, 
and extended and caricatured by his cotemporaries, it 
has one great merit, and one great defect. The merit 
is that it displaced an era of dead formality, and brought 
in the demand of a truly supernatural experience. The 
defect is, that it has cast a type of religious individual¬ 
ism, intense beyond any former example. It makes 
nothing of the family, and the church, and the organic 
powers God has constituted as vehicles of grace. It 
takes every man as if he had existed alone; presumes 
that he is unreconciled to God until he has undergone 


* Magnaiia, book v., foL p. 81. 




188 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


some sudden and explosive experience in adult years, 
or after tlie age of reason; demands that experience, and 
only when it is reached, allows the subject to be an heir 
of life. Then, on the other side, or that of the Spirit 
of God, the very act or ictus by which the change is 
wrought is isolated or individualized, so as to stand in 
no connection with any other of God’s means or causes 
—an epiphany, in which God leaps from the stars, or 
some place above, to do a work apart from all system, 
or connection with his other works. Religion is thus a 
kind of transcendental matter, which belongs on the 
outside of life, and has no part in the laws by which 
life is organized—a miraculous epidemic, a fire-ball shot 
from the moon, something holy, because it is from God, 
but so extraordinary, so out of place, that it can not 
suffer any vital connection with the ties, and causes, 
and forms, and habits, which constitute the frame of our 
history. Hence the desultory, hard, violent, and often 
extravagant or erratic character it manifests. Hence, 
in part, the dreary years of decay and darkness, that 
interspace our months of excitement and victory. 

Even Edwards himself, fifteen years after the Great 
Revival, began to be oppressed with sorrowful convic¬ 
tions of some great defect in the matter and mode of 
it, confessing his doubt whether “ the greater part of 
supposed converts give reason, by their conversation, to 
suppose that they continue convertsprotesting, also, 
his special confidence in the fruits of family religion in 
terms like these— 

“ Every Christian family ought to be, as it were, a 


OF CHILDREN. 


189 


little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influ¬ 
enced and governed by his rules. And family education 
and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these 
fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual.”* 
Dr. Hopkins, a pupil of Edwards, had probably been 
turned by suggestions from him, to a consideration of 
the importance of family nurture and piety, as con¬ 
nected with the propagation of religion; and, as if to 
supply some defect in this direction, he occupied sixty 
pages in his System of Divinity, with a careful discus¬ 
sion of the “ nature and design of infant baptism.” In 
this article, he goes even beyond the notion of a pre¬ 
sumptive piety in the children baptized, and says:— 
“ The church receive and look upon them as holy, and 
those who shall be saved. So they are as visibly holy, 
or as really holy, in their view, as their parents are.”f 
How far his theory of conversion would compel him 
to isolate the act of God by which the spiritual renova¬ 
tion of a soul is wrought, I will not undertake to de¬ 
cide. Enough, that he asserts an organic connection of 
character between parents and children, as effectual for 
good as for evil; nay, that they may as truly, and in 
the same sense, transmit holiness as they transmit ex¬ 
istence. Thus, after asserting, not more clearly or decid¬ 
edly than I have done, the impossibility that parents 
should spiritually renew their children, considered as 
acting by themselves, he says:— 

“ But it does not follow from this, that God has not 
so constituted the covenant of grace, that holiness shall 


♦ Vol. L p. 90. 


f Vol. ii. p. 319. 



190 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


be communicated, by Him, to tbe children, in conse¬ 
quence of the faithful endeavors of their parents; so 
that, in this sense, and by virtue of such a constitution, 
they do by their faithful endeavors convey saving bless¬ 
ings to their children. In this way they give existence 
to their children. God produces their existence by his 
own Almighty energy; but, by the constitution he has 
established, they receive their existence from their pa¬ 
rents, or by their means. By an established constitu¬ 
tion, parents convey moral depravity to their children. 
And if God has been pleased to make a constitution 
and appoint a way, in his covenant of grace with man, 
by which pious parents may convey and communicate 
moral rectitude or holiness to their children, they, by 
using the appointed means, do it as really and effectually 
as they communicate existence to them. In this sense, 
therefore, they may convey and give holiness and salva¬ 
tion to their children.”* 

Dr. Witherspoon, a cotemporary of Dr. Hopkins, 
held opinions on this subject that were in a high degree 
coincident, though presented in a more popular and less 
doctrinal shape. He says:— 

“I will not enlarge on some refined remarks of 
persons as distinguished for learning as piety, some 
of whom have supposed that they [children] are capa¬ 
ble of receiving impressions of desire and aversion, and 
even of moral temper, particularly of love or hatred, in 
the first year of their lives. * * * When the gos¬ 

pel comes to a people that have long sitten in darkness, 


* Pages 334, 335. 



OF CHILDREN. 


191 


there may be numerous converts of all ages; but when 
the gospel has long been preached, in plenty and purity, 
and ordinances regularly administered, few but those 
who are called in early life are called at all. A very 
judicious and pious writer, Richard Baxter, is of opin¬ 
ion that in a regular state of the church, and a tolerable 
measure of faithfulness and purity in its officers, family 
instruction and government are the usual means of con¬ 
version, public ordinances of edification. This seems 
agreeable to the language of Scripture; for we are told 
that God hath set in the church apostles, prophets, evan¬ 
gelists, pastors and teachers, (not for converting sinners, 
but) for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the 
ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”* 

From all these citations, which could be multiplied 
without limit, it will be seen that the children of Chris¬ 
tian parents have been looked upon as being heirs of 
the parental faith, and presumptively included in that 
faith; and so, either with or without a distinct assertion 
of the proper church membership of children, such 
opinions have been held in all ages respecting them, 
as make the denial of their membership a clear impro¬ 
priety and even a kind of offense against nature. 

It is hardly necessary to add, in closing this subject, 
that if children baptized are so far accepted as members 
of the Christian church, it must be a great fault and a 
most hurtful dereliction of duty that nothing is practi¬ 
cally made of this membership, and that really it passes 


* Witherspoon, vol. ii. f pp. 395, 397. 



192 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 


for a thing of no significance. The rite is appointed 
because it has a meaning and a value, and then, when 
it is passed, it is treated in a way that even indicates the 
possible absurdity of it. That the children will see any 
thing in such a mode of practice is impossible. And it 
requires but the smallest possible perception, to see that 
the rite will, in this manner, be regularly sinking into 
discredit, till it is quite done away, and the value it 
might have in the church is lost. To accomplish all 
that is needed to give full effect to the rite— 

Baptized children ought to be enrolled by name in 
the catalogue of each church, as composing a distinct 
class of candidate, or catechumen, members ; and to see 
that they are held in expectancy, thus, by the church, 
as presumptively one with them in the faith they 
profess. 

Then, when they come forward to acknowledge their 
baptism, and assume the covenant in their own choice, 
they ought not to be received as converts from the 
world, as if they were heathens coming into the fold, but 
there should be a distinction preserved, such as makes 
due account of their previous qualified membership ; a 
form of assumption tendered in place of a confession — 
something answering to the Lutheran confirmation , 
passed without a bishop’s hands. 

Children, as soon as they are well out of their infancy, 
ought to be taken also to the stated meetings of fellow¬ 
ship and prayer, drawn into all the moods of worship, 
praise, supplication, reproof, as being rightfully con¬ 
cerned in them, on the score of their membership. 


OF CHILDREN. 


193 


There ought to be a great deal made of singing too in 
such meetings, that they may join their voices and play 
into expression their own tribute of feeling and Chris¬ 
tian sentiment. 

Whenever there are orphan children, that have been 
baptized, the church ought to look after them, as being 
members; see, if possible, that they are not neglected, 
but trained up in a Christian manner; provided, if need 
be, with a godly fatherhood and motherhood in the 
church itself; led into the church and out into the 
world, as disciples beloved according to their years. 

Meantime, it is a matter of prime significance that 
the Christian father and mother should live so as to indi¬ 
cate a sense of their privilege and responsibility; even 
as Abraham did when he sojourned in the land of 
promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tents with 
Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same 'promise. It 
is one thing to live for a family of children, as if they 
were going possibly to be converted, and a very differ¬ 
ent to live for them as church members, training them 
into their holy profession; one thing to have them 
about as strangers to the covenant ot promise, and an¬ 
other to have them about as heirs of the same promise, 
growing up into it, to fulfill the seal of faith already 
upon them. One great reason why the children of 
Christian parents turn out so badly is, that they are 
taken to be the world, and the manner and spirit of the 
house are brought down to be of the world too, and 
partly for their sake. Take them as disciples of Jesus, 
to be carefully trained for Him; prepared to no mere 

17 


194 


CHURCH MEMBERSHIP. 


worldly tastes, and fashions, and pleasures, but kept in 
purity, saved from the world, and led forth under all 
tender examples of obedience and godly living; and it 
will be strange if that nurture of the Lord does not 
show them growing up in the faith, to be sons and 
daughters, indeed, of the Lord Almighty. 


VIII. 


THE OUT-POPULATING POWER OF THE CHRIS¬ 
TIAN STOCK. 

“And did he not make one? Yet had he the residue of the Spirit. 
And wherefore one ? That he might have a godly seed.”— Malachi , ii. 15. 

The prophet is enforcing here a strict observance of 
marriage. And he adverts, in his argument, to the sin¬ 
gle and sole state of the first human pair, as a standing 
proof against polygamy, inconstancy, and all similar 
abuses of the marriage state. God was not spent, he 
says, in creating a single man, Adam, and a single 
woman, Eve, but he had such a residue, or overplus of 
creative energy left, that he could have created millions 
if he would. Wherefore then did he cease, producing 
only just one man and woman, and no more? The 
answer is—That he might have a godly seed. In that 
lies the reason, he declares, of God’s economy in this 
family institution. We perceive, accordingly, 

That God is, from the first , looking for a godly seed; or, 
ivhat is nowise different , inserting such laws of population 
that piety itself shall finally over-populate the world . 

To be more explicit, there are, too, principal modes by 
^omof God among men may be, and is 
' ^ocess of conversion, and 
: r ' ^ hv s^ain- 


19(5 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

ing over to the side of faith and piety, the other by the 
populating force of faith and piety themselves. The 
former is the grand idea that has taken possession of the 
churches of our times—they are going to convert the 
world. They have taken hold of the promise, which 
so many of the prophets have given out, of a time when 
the reign of Christ shall be universal, extending to all 
nations and peoples; and the expectation is that, by 
preaching Christ to all the nations, they will finally 
convert them and bring them over into the gospel fold. 
Meantime very much less, or almost nothing, is made 
of the other method, viz: that of Christian population. 
Indeed, as we are now looking at religion, or religious 
character and experience, we can hardly find a place for 
any such thought as a possible reproduction thus of 
parental character and grace in children. They must 
come in by choice, on their own account; they must be 
converted over from an outside life that has grown to 
maturity in sin. Are they not individuals, and how 
are they to be initiated into any thing good by inherit¬ 
ance and before choice ? It is as if they were all so 
many Melchisedecs in their religious nature, only not 
righteous at all—without father, without mother, without 
descent. Descent brings them nothing. Born of faith, 
and bosomed in it, and nurtured by it, still there is yet 
to be no faith begotten in them, nor so much as a con¬ 
tagion even of faith to be caught in their garments. 

What I propose, at the present time, is to restore, if 
possible, a juster impression of this great subject; to 
show that conversion over to the church is not the only 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 


197 


way of increase; that God ordains a law of population 
in it as truly as he does in an earthly kingdom, or colo¬ 
ny, and by this increase from within, quite as much 
as by conversion from without, designs to give it, finally, 
the complete dominion promised. 

Nor let any one be repelled from this truth, or set 
against it, by the prejudice that piety is and must be a 
matter of individual choice. The same is true of sin. 
Many of us have no difficulty in saying that mankind 
are born sinners. They may just as truly and properly 
be born saints—it requires the self-active power to be 
just as far developed to commit sin, as it does to choose 
obedience. This individual capacity of will and choice 
is one that matures at no particular tick of the clock, 
but it comes along out of incipiencies, grows by imper¬ 
ceptible increments, and takes on a character, in good 
or evil, or a mixed character in both, so imperceptibly 
and gradually, that it seems to be, in some sense, pre¬ 
fashioned by what the birth and nurture have communi¬ 
cated. We may fitly enough call this character a prop¬ 
agated quality—in strictest metaphysical definition, it is 
not; in sturdiest fact of history, or practical life, it is. 

Nor let any one be diverted from the truth I am 
going to assert, by imagining that a propagated piety is, 
of course, a piety without regeneration, dispensing with 
what Christ himself declared to be the indispensable 
need of every human creature. For aught that appears, 
regeneration may, in some initial and profoundly real 
sense, be the twin element of propagation itself. The 
parentage may, in other words, be so thoroughly 
17 * 


198 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 


wrought in by the Spirit of God, as to communicate 
the seeds or incipiencies of a godly, just as it communi¬ 
cates the seeds of a depravated and disordered, char¬ 
acter. In one view, the child will be regenerate when he 
is born; in another view, he will not be, till the godly 
life is developed in his own personal choice and liberty. 

Dismissing these, and other like prepossessions, let us 
go on to examine some of the evidences by which this 
doctrine of church population is to be substantiated. 

1. I name, as an evidence, the very important fact 
that in the matter of infant baptism and infant church 
membership, grounded as they are in the assumption 
that a believing parentage sanctifies the offspring, God 
is seen to frame the order of church economy, so as to 
bring in the law of increase, or family propagation; 
looking to the populating principle for growth, just as 
the founder of a new colony, on some foreign shore, 
would look. He declares that parents are to be parents 
in the Lord, and children to grow up in the nurture of 
the Lord. The whole scheme of organic unity in the 
family and of family grace in the church, is just what 
it should be, if the design were to propagate religion, 
not by conversions only, but quite as much, or more, 
by the populating force embodied in it—just that force 
which, in all states and communities, is known to be the 
most majestic and silently creative force in their history. 

2. It is a matter of consequence to observe, that the 
Abrahamic order and covenant stood upon this footing, 
formally proposing and promising to make the father 
of the faithful a blessing to mankind, by and through the 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 199 

multitude of his offspring “ Look now,” says the word 
of promise, “ toward heaven and tell the stars, if thou be 
able to number them. So shall thy seed be.” Again, 
“I will make thee a father of many nations.” And 
again, “ All the nations of the earth shall be blessed in 
him.” Neither was it to be the only blessing, that 
Jesus, the Saviour of mankind, was to be born of this 
honored family. “ I will make thee exceeding fruit¬ 
ful,” was the form of the promise; and the blessing, as 
we may see, by all the modes of expression used, was 
to turn as much on the wonderful populousness of the 
stock, overspreading the world, as it*was, on the new- 
creating grace to be unfolded in it. For if it be matter 
of debate, in what precise manner, the Christian church 
has connection with this more ancient and apparently 
mere family bond, there is certainly no doubt in the 
mind of the great Christian apostle, that there is a real 
and valid connection of some kind, such that the prom¬ 
ise passes and spreads, and is to get its fulfillment, only 
when the godly seed has filled the world. The spread 
of Christianity is, in his view, the blessing of Abraham 
come on the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ. These 
Gentile converts, too, he calls the seed of Abraham— 
“And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed and 
heirs according to the promise.” He looks, you will 
perceive, on the Gentile converts as being grafted in 
upon the ancient stock; which also he expressly says, 
in another place, counting them to be so unified with 
Abraham, as to be the outgrowth of his person. Just 
as the proselytes were taken to be sons and daughters 


200 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

of Abraham, naturalized into bis stock, so are these 
converts to become the channel of his over-populating 
force, till such time as the natural branches, broken off, 
are grafted in again. And, in this view, it is that the 
Gentile converts are called “ a seed ,” that being the word 
that contemplates the fact of their multiplication as a 
family of God. 

3. It is an argument which ought to be convinc¬ 
ing, that the universal spread of the gospel, and the 
universal reign of Christian truth—that which proph¬ 
ets and apostles promise, and which we, in these last 
times, have tak^i up as our fondest, most impelling 
Christian hope—plainly enough never can be compassed 
by the process of adult conversions, but must finally be 
reached, if reached at all, by the populating forces of a 
family grace in the church. We expect that, in that 
day, all flesh shall see the salvation of God, and that 
every thing human will be regenerated by it; that the 
glory of God will cover the earth like a baptism of 
water—even as the waters cover the sea. These are to 
be the times of the restitution of all things. God, we 
believe, will put his laws now in the mind, and write 
them on the heart, and “ all shall know him from the 
least to the greatest.” I do not care to press these epi¬ 
thets least and greatest —perhaps there is no reference to 
children in them. It would scarcely make the text 
more significant if there were; for this universal tri¬ 
umph of the word, in which we all believe, this im¬ 
printing of it on men’s hearts, all over the world, in 
such manner as to make the day of glory—that great 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 20i 

day of light which figures so grandly in the visions of 
God’s prophets and apostles, and is promised by Christ 
himself—such a day, I say, can plainly enough never be 
reached, as long as the children of the world grow up in 
sin, as we now assume to be the fact, still to be called 
and prayed for as now and preached into the kingdom. 
"When the little child shall lead forth in pairs the wolf 
and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the 
young lion; when the sucking child shall play on the 
hole of the asp unstung, and the weaned child shall put 
his hand unbitten on the cockatrice’s den; we not only 
take hold of it as the prophet’s meaning that there is to 
be a great universal mitigation of the ferocities of appe¬ 
tite, and prey, and passion, in the world, but that the 
little ones are to have their part in the joy, and be 
raised in dominion by that all-renewing grace which 
has now restored and imparadised the world. Otherwise 
our day of glory would be such a kind of jubilee as 
shows the adult souls only of the race to be gathered 
into the kingdom, while the poor, unripe sinners of 
childhood, a full fourth in the total number, are in no 
sense, in it, but are waiting their conversion-time on 
the outside I This is not our millennial day; we have 
no such hope. 

We conceive that Christ will then overspread all souls 
with his glory, and that children, filled according to 
their age and measure with the divine motions of grace, 
will be unfolding the heavenly beauty, as they advance 
in years, even as the flowers unfold their colors in the 
sun. These colors no one sees in the root, and the 


202 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

clear, transparent sap it circulates, and yet the color ia 
there. Just so will God, in that great day of grace, 
bring out of infancy and childhood, sanctifyingly 
touched by his Spirit, what creates them children of 
God, as truly as their parents, though too subtle to be 
seen, or defined, till it has blushed into color, in the 
sunlight of their intelligence in the truth. Such a day 
of glory then contemplates a great in-birth of sanctifi¬ 
cation, or renewing life. Conversions from without are 
to have their part in preparing it, but the consumma¬ 
tion hoped for is even impossible, as regards a third or 
fourth part of the race, save as it is reached by a popu¬ 
lating process which enters them into life itself, through 
the gate of a sanctified infancy and childhood. 

4. Consider a very important fact in human physiol¬ 
ogy which goes far to explain, or take away the strange¬ 
ness and seeming extravagance of the truth I am en¬ 
deavoring to establish, viz., that qualities of education, 
habit, feeling, and character, have a tendency always 
to grow in, by long continuance, and become thor¬ 
oughly inbred in the stock. We meet humble analo¬ 
gies of this fact in the domestic animals. The opera¬ 
tions to which they are trained, and in which they 
become naturalized by habit, become predispositions, in 
a degree, in their offspring; and they, in their turn, are 
as much more easily trained on that account. The 
next generation are trained still more easily, till what 
was first made habitual, finally becomes functional in 
the stock, and almost no training is wanted. That 
which was inculcated by practice passes into a ten- 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 


203 


dency, and descends as a natural gift, or endowment. 
The same thing is observable, on a large scale, in the 
families of mankind. A savage race is a race bred into 
low living, and a faithless, bloody character. The in¬ 
stinct of law, society, and order is substituted, finally, 
by the overgrown instinct of prey, and the race is lost 
to any real capacity of social regeneration; unless they 
can somehow be kept in ward, and a process of train¬ 
ing, long enough to breed in what has been lost. A 
race of slaves becomes a physiologically servile race in 
the same way. And so it is, in part, that civilization 
descends from one generation to another. It is not 
merely that laws, social modes, and instrumentalities of 
education descend, and that so the new sprung genera¬ 
tions are fashioned after birth, by the forms and princi¬ 
ples and causes into which they have been set, but it is 
that the very type of the inborn quality is a civilized 
type. The civilization is, in great part, an inbred 
civility. There is a something functional in them, 
which is itself configured to the state of art, order, law, 
and property. 

The Jewish race are a striking and sad proof of the 
manner in which any given mode of life may, or rather 
must, become a functional property in the offspring. 
The old Jewish stock of the Scripture times, whatever 
faults they may have had, certainly were not marked 
by any such miserably, sordid, usurious, garbage-vend¬ 
ing propensity, as now distinguishes the race. But the 
cruelties they have suffered under Christian govern¬ 
ments, shut up in the Jews’ quarter of the great cities, 


204 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

dealing in old clothes and other mean articles for their 
gains, hiding these in the shape of gold and jewels in 
the crevices of their cellars, to prevent seizure by the 
emissaries of the governments, and disguising their 
prosperity itself by the squalid dress of their persons— 
these, continued from age to age, have finally bred in 
the character we so commonly speak of with contempt. 
Our children, treated as they have been for so many 
generations, would finally reveal the marks of their 
wrongs in the same sordid, miserly instincts. 

Now if it be true that what gets power in any race, 
by a habit or a process of culture, tends by a fixed law 
of nature to become a propagated quality, and pass by 
descent as a property inbred in the stock; if in this way 
whole races of men are cultivated into properties that 
are peculiar—off into a savage character, down into a 
servile or a mercenary, up into civilization or a high 
social state—what is to be the effect of a thoroughly 
Christian fatherhood and motherhood, continued for a 
long time in the successive generations of a family? 
What can it be but a general mitigation of the bad 
points of the stock, and a more and more completely 
inbred piety. The children of such a stock are born, 
not of the flesh only, or the mere natural life of their 
parentage, but they are born, in a sense most emphatic, 
of the Spirit also; for this parentage is differed, as we 
are supposing, age by age, from its own mere nature in 
Adam, by the inhabiting grace of a supernatural salva¬ 
tion. Physiologically speaking, they are tempered by 
this grace, and it is all the while tending to become, in 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 205 

some sense, an inbred quality. Hence tbe very fre¬ 
quent remark—“ How great a privilege and order 
of nobility to be descended of a pious ancestry!” 
It is tbe blessing that is to descend to tbe thou¬ 
sandth generation of them that love God and keep bis 
commandments. 

In this view it is to be expected, as tbe life of Chris¬ 
tian piety becomes more extended ip tbe earth, and tbe 
Spirit of God obtains a living power, in tbe successive 
generations, more and more complete, that finally tbe 
race itself will be so thoroughly regenerated as to have 
a genuinely populating power in faith and godliness. 
By a kind of ante-natal and post-natal nurture combined, 
tbe new-born generations will be started into Christian 
piety, and tbe world itself over-populated and taken 
possession of by a truly sanctified stock. This I con¬ 
ceive to be tbe expectation of Christianity. Not that 
tbe bad heritage of depravity will cease, but that tbe 
second Adam will get into power with tbe first, and be 
entered seminally into tbe same great process of propa¬ 
gated life. And this fulfills that primal desire of tbe 
world’s Creator and Father, of which tbe prophet 
speaks—“ That be might have a godly seed.” 

And let no one be offended by this, as if it supposed 
a possible in-growth and propagation of piety, by mere 
natural laws and conditions. What higher ground of 
supernaturalism can be taken, than that which sup¬ 
poses a capacity in the Incarnate Word, and Sanctify¬ 
ing Spirit, to penetrate our fallen nature, at a point so 
deep as to cover the whole spread of the fall, and be a 
18 


206 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

grace of life, traveling outward from tlie earliest, most 
latent germs of our human development. It is only 
saying, with a meaning—“ My substance was not hid 
from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously 
wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” Or, in 
still another view, it is only conceiving that those 
sporadic cases of sanctification from the womb, of which 
the Scripture speaks, such as that of Samuel, Jere¬ 
miah, and John, are to finally become the ordinary 
and common fact of family development. 

In such cases, the faith or piety of a single pair, or 
possibly of the mother alone, begets a heavenly mold 
in the predispositions of the offspring, so that, as it is 
born of sin, it is also born of a heavenly grace. If 
then we suppose the heavenly grace to have such 
power, in the long continuing process of ages, as to 
finally work the general stock of parentage into its 
own heavenly mold, far enough to prepare a sanctified 
offspring for the world, what higher, grander fact of 
Christian supernaturalism could be asserted ? Nor is 
it any thing more of a novelty than to say, that “ where 
sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” The 
conception is one that simply fulfills what Baxter, Hop¬ 
kins, and others, were apparently struggling after,* 
when contriving how to let the grace of God in our 
salvation, match itself by the hereditary damage, or 
depravation, that descends upon us from our parentage, 
and the organic unity of our nature as a race. And 
probably enough they were put upon this mode of 


* See quotations from these writers in the last Discourse. 



OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 207 

thought, by the familiar passage of Paul just re¬ 
ferred to. 

Christianity then has a power, as we discover, to pre¬ 
pare a godly seed. It not only takes hold of the world 
by its converting efficacy, but it has a silent force 
that is much stronger and more reliable; it moves, by 
a kind of destiny, in causes back of all the eccentric 
and casual operations of mere individual choice, pre¬ 
paring, by a gradual growing in of grace, to become 
the great populating motherhood of the world. In this 
conviction, we shall be strengthened— 

5. By the well known fact, that the populating 
power of any race, or stock, is increased according to 
the degree of personal and religious character to which 
it has attained. Good principles and habits, intellectual 
culture, domestic virtue, industry, order, law, faith— 
all these go immediately to enhance the rate and ca¬ 
pacity of population. They make a race powerful, not 
in the mere military sense, but in one that, by century- 
long reaches of populating force, lives down silently 
every mere martial competitor. Any people that is 
physiologically advanced in culture, though it be only 
in a degree, beyond another which is mingled with it 
on strictly equal terms, is sure to live down and finally 
live out its inferior. Nothing can save the inferior 
race but a ready and pliant assimilation. 

The promise to Abraham depended, doubtless, on 
this fact for its fulfillment. God was to make his 
family fruitful, above others, by imparting Himself to 
it, and so infusing a higher tone of personal life. 


208 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

Hence also the grand religious fact that this race un¬ 
folded a populating power so remarkable. Going 
down into Egypt, as a starving family, it begins to be 
evident in about four hundred years, that they are over- 
populating the great kingdom of Egypt itself. “ The 
children of Israel were fruitful and increased abund¬ 
antly, and multiplied and waxed exceeding mighty, 
and the land was filled with them.” Till finally the 
jealousy of the throne was awakened, and the king 
began to say—“ Behold the people of the children of 
Israel are more and mightier than we!” 

Afterwards little Palestine itself was like a swarm of 
bees; building great cities, raising great armies, and 
displaying all the tokens, age upon age, of a great and 
populous empire. So great was the fruitfulness of the 
stock, compared with other nations of the time, owing 
to the higher personality unfolded in them, by their 
only partial and very crude training, in a monotheistic 
religion. 

And again, at a still later time, when the nation itself 
is dismembered, and thousands of the people are driven 
off into captivity, we find that when the great king of 
Persia had given out an edict of extermination against 
them, and would like to recall it but can not, because 
of the absurd maxim that what the king has decreed 
must not be changed, he has only to publish another 
decree, that they shall have it as their right to stand for 
their lives, and that is enough to insure their complete 
immunity. ‘ ‘ They gathered themselves together in their 
cities, and throughout all the provinces, and no man 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 209 

could withstand them, for the fear of them fell upon all 
people.” In which we may see how this captive race 
had- multiplied and spread themselves, in this incredi¬ 
bly short time, through all the great kingdom of the 
Medo-Persian kings. 

Or we may take a more modern illustration, drawn 
from the comparative history of the Christian and Mo¬ 
hammedan races. The Christian development begins 
at an older date, and the Mohammedan at a later. One 
is a propagation by moral and religious influences, at 
least in part; the other a propagation by military force. 
Both have religious ideas and aims, but the main dis¬ 
tinction is that one is taken hold of by religion as be¬ 
ing a contribution to the free personal nature of souls ; 
and the other is taken hold of by a religion whose grip 
is the strong grip of fate. For a time, this latter spread 
like a fire in the forest, propagated by the terrible sword 
of predestination, and it even seemed about to override 
the world. But it by-and-bye began to appear, that 
one religion was creating and the other uncreating 
manhood; one toning up a great and powerful charac¬ 
ter, and the other toning down, steeping in lethargy, 
the races it began to inspire; till finally we can now 
see as distinctly as possible, that one is pouring on great 
tides of population, creating a great civilization, and 
great and powerful nations; the other, falling away into 
a feeble, half-depopulated, always decaying state, that 
augurs final extinction at no distant period. Now the 
fact is that these two great religions of the world had 
each, in itself, its own law of population from the be* 
18 * 


210 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

ginning, and it was absolutely certain, whether it could 
be seen or not, that Christianity would finally live 
down Mohammedanism, and completely expurgate the 
world of it. The campaigning centuries of European 
chivalry, pressing it with crusade after crusade, could 
not bring it under; but the majestic populating force 
of Christian faith and nurture can even push it out of 
the world, as in the silence of a dew-fall. 

What a lesson also could be derived, in the same 
manner, from a comparison of the populating forces 
of the Puritan stock in this country, and of the inferior, 
superstitions, half Christian stock and nurture of the 
South American states. And the reason of the differ¬ 
ence is that Christianity, having a larger, fuller, more 
new-creating force in one, gives it a populating force as 
much superior. 

How this advantage accrues, and is, at some future 
time, to be more impressively revealed than now, it is 
not difficult to see. Let the children of Christian 
parents grow up, all, as partakers in their grace, which 
is the true Christian idea, and the law of family in¬ 
crease they are in, is, by the supposition, so far brought 
into the church, and made operative there. And then 
comes in also the additional fact, that there are causes 
and conditions of increase now operative in the church 
which exist nowhere else. 

Here, for example, there will be a stronger tide of 
health than elsewhere. In the world without, multi¬ 
tudes are perishing continually by vice and extrava¬ 
gance, and, when they do not perish themselves, they 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 211 

are always entailing tlie effects of their profligacy on the 
half-endowed constitution of their children. Meantime, 
in the truly Christian life, there is a good keeping of 
temperance, a steady sway of the passions, a robust 
equability and courage, and the whole domain of the soul 
is kept more closely to God’s order; which again is the 
way of health, and implies a higher law of increase. 

Wealth, again, will be unfolded more rapidly under 
the condition of Christian living than elsewhere; and 
wealth enough to yield a generous supply of the com¬ 
mon wants of life, is another cause that favors popula¬ 
tion. True piety is itself a principle of industry and 
application to business. It subordinates the love of 
show and all the tendencies to extravagance. It rules 
those licentious passions that war with order and econ¬ 
omy. It generates a faithful character, which is the basis 
of credit, as credit, of prosperity. Hence it is that upon 
the rocky, stubborn soil, under the harsh and frowning 
skies of our New England, we behold so much of high 
prosperity, so much of physical well-being, and orna¬ 
ment. And the wealth created is diffused about as 
evenly as the piety. A true Christian society has 
mines opened, thus, in its own habits and principles. 
And the wealth accruing is power in every direction, 
power in production, enterprise, education, colonization, 
influence, and consequent popular increase. 

There will also be more talent unfolded in a Christian 
people, and talent also takes the helm of causes every 
where. Christian piety is itself a kind of holy devel¬ 
opment, enlarging every way the soul’s dimensions. 


212 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 


It will also be found tbat Christian families abound 
with influences, specially favorable to the awakening of 
the intellectual principle in childhood. Beligion itself 
is thoughtful. It carries the child’s mind over directly 
to unknown worlds, fills the understanding with the 
sublimest questions, and sends the imagination abroad 
to occupy itself where angels’ wings would tire. The 
child of a Christian family is thus unsensed, at the ear 
liest moment, and put into mental action; this, too, un¬ 
der the healthy and genial influence of Christian prin¬ 
ciple. Every believing soul, too, is exalted and empow¬ 
ered by union to God. His judgment is clarified, his 
reason put in harmony with truth, his emotions swelled 
in volume, his imagination fired by the object of his 
faith. The church, in short, is God’s university, and it 
lies in her foundation as a school of spiritual life, to 
energize all capacity, and make her sons a talented and 
powerful race. 

Here, too, are the great truths, and all the grandest, 
most fruitful ideas of existence. Here will spring up 
science, discovery, invention. The great books will be 
born here, and the highest, noblest, most quickening 
character will here be fashioned. Popular liberties and 
the rights of persons will here be asserted. Commerce 
will go forth hence, to act the preluding of the Christian 
love, in the universal fellowship of trade. 

And so we see, by this rapid glance along the inven¬ 
tories of Christian society, that all manner of causes are 
included in it, that will go to fine the organization, raise 
the robustness, swell the volume, multiply the means, 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 


213 


magnify the power of the Christian body. It stands 
among the other bodies and religons, just as any ad¬ 
vanced race, the Saxon for example, stands among the 
feebler, wilder races, like the Aborigines of our conti¬ 
nent ; having so much power of every kind that it puts 
them in shadow, weakens them, lives them down, roll¬ 
ing its over-populating tides across them, and sweeping 
them away, as by a kind of doom. Just so there is, in 
tbe Christian church, a grand law of increase by which 
it is rolling out and spreading over the world. Whether 
the feebler and more abject races are going to be regen¬ 
erated and raised up, is already very much of a ques¬ 
tion. What if it should be God’s plan to people the 
world with better and finer material? Certain it is, 
whatever expectations we may indulge, that there is a 
tremendous overbearing surge of power in the Christian 
nations, which, if the others are not speedily raised to 
some vastly higher capacity, will inevitably submerge 
and bury them forever. These great populations of 
Christendom—what are they doing, but throwing out 
their colonies on every side, and populating themselves, 
if I may so speak, into the possession of all countries 
and climes ? By this doom of increase, the stone that 
was cut out without hands, shows itself to be a very 
peculiar stone, viz: a growing stone, that is fast becom¬ 
ing a great mountain, and preparing, as the vision shows, 
to fill the whole earth. 

We are not, of course, to suspend our efforts to con¬ 
vert the heathen nations—we shall never become a 
thoroughly regenerate stock, save as we are trained up 


214 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

into sncli eminence, by our works of mercy to man¬ 
kind. It is for God to say what races are to be finally 
submerged and lost, and not for us. Meantime, we are 
to gain over and save as many as possible by conver¬ 
sion, and so to hasten the day of promise. And what 
feebler and more pitiful conceit could we fall into, than 
to assume that we have the grand, over-populating 
grace in our own stock, and sit down thus to see it ac¬ 
complish by mere propagation, that which of itself 
supposes a glorious inbred habit of faith, and sacrifice, 
and heavenly charity. I only say that, when we set 
ourselves to the great work of converting the world, 
we are to see that we do not miscondition the state of 
childhood, and throw quite away from us, meantime, 
all the mighty advantages that God designs to give us, 
in this other manner; viz., in the religious nurture and 
growth of the godly seed. 

Once more, it is a consideration that will have great 
weight with all deeply, thoughtful persons, that the vin¬ 
dication of God in sin, suffering, punishment, and all 
evil pertaining to the race, probably depends, to a great 
degree, on just the truth I am here endeavoring to es¬ 
tablish. How constantly is the question raised, why 
God, as an infinitely good and gracious Father, should 
put on foot such a scheme of existence as this; one 
that unites such oppressive disadvantages, and is to be 
such a losing concern? We begin life, it is said, with 
constitutions depravated and poisoned, and come thus 
into choice with predispositions that are damaged even 
beforehand. Idolatry, darkness, and guilt, overspread 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 


215 


the world, in this manner, from age to age, and the vast 
majorities of the race, rotting away thus into death 
under sin, are being all the while precipitated into a 
wretched eternity, which is their end; for they go hence 
in a state visibly disqualified for the enjoyment, either 
of themselves, or of God. The picture is a very dark 
one, though I feel a decided confidence that every sin¬ 
gle part of God’s counsel in it can be sufficiently vindi¬ 
cated. But this is not a matter in the compass of my 
present inquiry, except so far as the general difficulty 
is relieved by the possibility and prospect of great 
future advantages that are to accrue, in the fact of a 
grand over-populating righteousness, which is finally to 
change the aspect of the whole question. We are not 
to assume, with many, that the world is now just upon 
its close, but to look upon it as barely having opened 
its first chapter of history. Its real value, and what is 
really to come of it, probably does not even yet begin 
to appear. When its propagations cease to be mere 
propagations of evil, or of moral damage and disaster, 
and become propagations of sanctified life, and ages of 
life; when the numbers, talents, comforts, powers of the 
immense godly populations are increased to more than 
a hundred fold what they now are; and when, at some 
incomputable distance of time, whose rate of approach 
is only hinted by the geologic ages of the planet, they 
look back upon us as cotemporaries almost of Adam, 
and forward through ages of blessing just begun, be¬ 
holding so many worlds-full of regenerated mind and 
character, pouring in from hence to over-people, as it 


216 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

were, eternity itself; they will certainly have a very 
different opinion of the scheme of existence from that 
which we most naturally take up now. Then it will 
be confessed that the nurture of the Lord has meaning 
and force enough to change the aspect of every thing 
in God’s plan. Our scheme of propagated and deriva¬ 
tive life is no longer a scheme of disadvantage, but a 
mode of induction that gives to every soul the noblest, 
safest beginning possible. On the other hand, if we 
cling to the present way and state as the measure of all 
highest possibilities, and expect to go on converting 
over, out of heathenism and death, the sturdy, grown¬ 
up aliens of depravity, it will be a most difficult—always 
growing more and more difficult—thing to vindicate 
the ways of God in what he has put upon the world. 
Shall we miss, and give it to the future ages to miss, a 
a vindication of God’s way so inspiring in itself and so 
often promised in his word ? 

Having reached this closing point or consummation 
of the doctrine of nurture, we are able, I think, to see 
something of the dignity there is in it. How trivial, 
unnatural, weak, and, at the same time, violent, in com¬ 
parison, is that overdone scheme of individualism, 
which knows the race only as mere units of will and 
personal action; dissolves even families into monads; 
makes no account of organic relations and uses; and 
expects the world to be finally subdued by adult con¬ 
versions, when growing up still, as before, in all the 
younger tiers of life, toward a mere convertible state 


OP THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 217 

of adult ungodliness. Sucli a scheme gives a most un- 
genial and forlorn aspect to the family. It makes the 
church a mere gathering in of adult atoms, to be in¬ 
creased only by the gathering in of other and more 
numerous adult atoms. It very nearly makes the 
scheme of existence itself an abortion; finding no great 
law of propagative good and mercy in it, and taking 
quite away the possibility and prospect of that sublime 
vindication of God which is finally to be developed, and 
by which God’s way in the creation' is to be finally 
crowned with all highest honors of counsel and benefi¬ 
cence. Opposite to this, we have seen how it is God’s * 
plan, by ties of organic unity and nurture, to let one 
generation extend itself into and over another, in the 
order of grace, just as it does in the order of nature; 
to let us expect the growing up of children in the Lord, 
even as their parents are to be parents in the Lord, and 
are set to bring them up in the nurture of the Lord; 
on this ground of anticipation, permitting us to apply 
the seal of our faith to them, as being incipiently in the 
quickening of our faith, even before they have intelli¬ 
gence to act it, and consciously choose it; so accepting 
them to be members of the church, as being presump¬ 
tively in the life of the church; in this manner incor¬ 
porating in the church a great law of grace and sancti¬ 
fying power, by which finally the salvation will become 
an inbred life and populating force, mighty enough to 
overlive, and finally to completely people the world. 
And this is what we call the day of glory. It lies, to a 
great degree, in the scheme of Christian nurture itself, 

19 


218 


THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 


and is possible only as a consummation of that scheme. 
If I rightly conceive the gospel work and plan, this is 
the regeneration [-mXiyyswetfia] which our Lord prom¬ 
ises, viz.: that he will reclaim and resanctify the great 
principle of reproductive order and life, and people, at 
last, the world with a godly seed. 

The church, as being made up of souls that are born 
of the Spirit is a new supernatural order thus in hu¬ 
manity ; a spiritual nation, we may conceive, that was 
founded by a colony from the skies. It alights upon 
our globe as its chartered territory. Can it overspread 
the whole planet and take possession ? We see that it 
can unfold more of health, wealth, talent, than the 
present living races of inhabitants. It has within itself 
a stronger law of population, as well as a mighty power 
to win over and assimulate the nations. Its people 
have more truth, beauty, weight of character to exalt 
their predominance. And, what is more, God is in them 
by his all-informing, all-energizing Spirit, to be Him¬ 
self unfolded in their history, and make it powerful. 
Not to believe that the Heavenly Colony, thus consti¬ 
tuted and endowed, will finally overspread and fill the 
world, is to deny causes, their effects, and to quite in¬ 
vert the natural order of strength and weakness. God, 
too, has testified in regard to this branch of his plant¬ 
ing—“ They shall inherit the land.” 

It is very obvious that this general view of Christian 
nurture, and its effects is one that, becoming really in¬ 
stalled in our faith, and the aims of our piety, would 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 219 

induce important modifications in our Christian prac¬ 
tice, and change, to a considerable degree, the modes 
of our religious demonstration. Our oyer-intense indi¬ 
vidualism carries with it an immense loss of feeling, 
affection, sentiment, which hardens the aspect of every 
thing, and dries away the sweet charities and tender 
affections that would grace the older generations of 
souls, when conceiving that the younger live in them, 
and are somehow folded in their personality. We not 
only lose our children under this atomizing scheme of 
piety, which is a loss we can not afford, but a certain 
misproportion is induced, which distempers all our 
efforts and demonstrations. 

One principal reason why we are so often deficient in 
character, or outward beauty, is, that piety begins too 
late in life, having thus to maintain a perpetual and 
unequal war with previous habit. If it was not true 
of Paul, it is yet too generally true, that one born out 
of due time will be found out of due time, more often 
than he should be afterwards—unequal, inconsistent 
with himself, acting the old man instead of the new. 
Having the old habit to war with, it is often too strong 
for him. To make a graceful and complete Christian 
character, it needs itself to be the habit of existence; 
not a grape grafted on a bramble. And this, it will be 
seen, requires a Christian childhood in the subject. 
Having this, the gracious or supernatural character be¬ 
comes itself more nearly natural, and possesses the pe¬ 
culiar charm of naturalness, which is necessary to the 
highest moral beauty. 


220 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

It results also from our mistaken views of Christian 
training, that we fall into a notion of religion that is 
mechanical. We thrust our children out of the cove¬ 
nant first, and insist, in spite of it, that they shall grow 
up in the same spiritual state as if their father and 
mother were heathens. Then we go out, at least on 
certain occasions, to convert them back, as if they 
actually were heathens. Our only idea of increase is of 
that which accrues by means of a certain abrupt technical 
experience. Led away thus from all thought of inter¬ 
nal growth in the church, efforts to secure conversions 
take an external character, becoming gospel campaigns. 
Accretion displaces growth. The church is gathered as a 
foundling hospital; and lest it should not be such, its own 
children are reduced to foundlings. Immediate repent¬ 
ance proclaimed, insisted on, and realized in an abrupt 
change, proper only to those who are indeed aliens and 
enemies, is the only hope or inlet of the church. We 
can not understand how the spiritual nation should grow 
and populate, and become powerful within itself. 

Piety becomes inconstant, and revivals of religion 
take an exaggerated character from the same causes. 
If all Christian success is measured by the count of 
technical conversions from without, then it follows that 
nothing is done when conversions cease to be counted. 
The harvest closes not with feasting, but with famine. 
Despair cuts off Christian motive. The tide is spent; 
let us anchor during the ebb. It is well indeed to live 
very piously in the families; still, there is nothing de¬ 
pending on it. The children will be good subjects 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 221 

enough for conversion without. The piety of the 
church is thus made to be desultory and irregular by 
system. The idea of conquest displaces the idea of 
growth. Whereas, if it were understood that Christian 
education or training in the families, is to be itself a 
process of domestic conversion; that as a child weeps 
under a frown and smiles at the command of a smile, 
so spiritual influences may be streaming into his being 
from the handling of the nursery and the whole man¬ 
ner and temperament of the house, producing what will 
ever after be fundamental impressions of his being; 
then the hearth, the table, the society and affections of 
the house, would all feel the presence of a practical 
religious motive. The homes would be Christian, the 
families abodes of piety. 

Here too is the greatest impediment to a true mis¬ 
sionary spirit. The habit of conquest runs to dissipa¬ 
tion and irregularity. It is as if a nation, forgetting its 
own internal resources, were scouring the seas, and 
trooping up and down the world, in pursuit of prize- 
money and plunder, forsaking the loom and the plow, 
and all the regular growths of industry. Whereas, if 
the church were unfolding the riches of the covenant 
at her firesides and tables; if the children were identi¬ 
fied. with religion from the first, and grew up in a 
Christian love of man, the missionary spirit would not 
throw itself up in irregular jets, but would flow as a river. 

We suffer also greatly and even produce a somewhat 
painful evidence of mistake, in our endeavor to be 
always operating by an immediate influence of the 
19 * 


222 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 

Holy Spirit, when we make his mediate influence a 
matter of little account. For there is, I apprehend, a 
certain fixed relation between those exertions of spir¬ 
itual influence which are immediate, and those which 
flow mediately from the church; else why has not the 
Spirit left the church behind, and poured itself, as a 
rushing, mighty wind, into the bosom of the whole 
world in a day ? There needed to be an objective in¬ 
fluence, as well as one internal; else the subject of the 
Spirit would not know or guess to what his internal 
motions are attributable, and might deem them only 
nervous or hysteric effects; or possibly, if a heathen, the 
work of some enchanter or demon. When the church, 
therefore, grows and manifests the work of God by the 
beauty of her life, and the heavenly energy of her 
spirit, when the sanctification she speaks of visibly 
strikes through—through the body, through the man¬ 
ners and works, into the family state, into the commu¬ 
nity—that is the mediate influence necessary to another 
which is immediate. Looking on her demonstrations, 
the observer is not only impressed and drawn by the 
assimilating power of her character, but he distin¬ 
guishes in her the type and form of that into which 
he is himself to be wrought, and so he is ready for the 
intelligent reception of the Spirit in himself. If now 
there is this fixed relation between God’s mediate and 
immediate agency in souls, how great is the mistake, 
when we virtually assume, in our efforts and expecta¬ 
tions, that he will come upon souls, only as the light¬ 
ning is bolted from the sky. How desultory and 


OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 223 

irruptive is the grace he ministers, how little respective 
of the work he has already begun in others, whom he 
might employ to be the medium of his power! On 
the other hand, if we are right in this view—if there is 
a fixed relation between the mediate and immediate 
influences of the Spirit—such that one measures the 
other, (and we could urge many additional reasons for 
the opinion,) then are we brought fairly out upon the 
sublime conclusion, that the growth or progress of 
Christian piety in the church, if it shall take place, 
offers the expectation of a correspondent progress in 
the development of those spiritual influences that are 
immediate. The mediate and immediate are both iden¬ 
tical at the root. If therefore the church unfolds her 
piety as a divine life, which is one, the divine life will 
display its activity as much more potently and victo¬ 
riously without, which is the other. And as the king¬ 
dom of heaven, which was at first as a grain of mustard 
seed, advances in the last days toward the stature of 
a tree, the more it may advance; for the Holy Spirit 
will pour himself into the world, as much more 
freely and powerfully. Grant, 0 God I that we may 
not disappoint ourselves of a hope so glorious, by at¬ 
tempts to extend thy church without that holy growth 
of piety, on which our success depends! Pour thyself) 
in thy fullness and as a gale of purity, into our bosom 
Expel all schemes that are not begun in Thee! Let 
there be good desires in us, that our works may be 
good! And that Thou mayest do thy will in the earth, 
do it in us perfectly! 


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WHEN AND WHERE THE NURTURE BEGINS. 


“ When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which 
dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice, and I am 
persuaded that in thee also.”—2 Timothy , i. 5. 

This faith of Timothy, which is but another name 
for the grace of life in his character, the apostle speaks 
of here, it will be seen, as a kind of personal heredita¬ 
ment, or heir-loom in the family. He does not mean to 
say, as I understand him, that it is literally such, or in 
what sense, and how far, it is such. He only recog¬ 
nizes a godly parentage, doing godly things in him and 
for him, for one, two, three, or he knows not how many, 
generations back. He regards his young friend as born 
of godliness, nurtured and trained by godliness, and 
indulges a certain pleasant conviction that his present, 
full developed faith in Jesus, was a seed somehow 
planted in him by the believing motherhoods of the 
past, and began to live and grow in him, thus, long be¬ 
fore he knew it himself, or others observed it in him. 
So by a short method, which includes and covers all, the 
apostle calls it his heir-loom; complimenting his godly 
motherhood in the figure, and testifying the greater 
confidence in his piety, that it was so near to being the 
inborn nobility of his Christian stock. 


228 


WHEN AND WHERE 


I use the text, accordingly, not to draw some definite 
conclusion or truth, from the evidently well understood 
indefiniteness of the terms of it, but simply to head a 
discussion of the question, when and where , at what pointy 
and how early , does the office of a genuine nurture begin ? 

Having settled our conceptions of the scheme, or doc¬ 
trinal import, of Christian nurture, finding what place 
it has, and is to have, in the Christian plan, we are 
come now to a matter farther in advance, and, in one 
view, more practical, viz: to a consideration of the 
modes and means, by which the true idea of a godly 
nurture may be realized in the training of families. 
And here it becomes our first endeavor to rectify, or ex¬ 
pel a whole set of false impressions, that have grown 
up round the gate of responsibility itself, turning off, 
and pushing aside all due concern, till the time of 
greatest facility and advantage is quite gone by. The 
very common impression is that nothing is to be done 
for the religious character of children, till they are old 
enough to form religious judgments, put forth religious 
choices, take the meaning of the Christian truths, and 
perceive what is in them as related to the wants of 
sin, consciously felt and reflected on. There could not 
be a more sad or, in fact, more desolating mistake, in 
any matter, either of duty or of privilege. And it is 
the more wonderful, the closer in appearance to real fa 
tuity, that it holds its ground so firmly, where all the 
tenderest pressures of affection might be expected to 
force it aside, and clear the field of its really cruel 
usurpations. 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 


229 


In discussing the question proposed, I should not 
properly cover the whole ground of it, and could not 
really be said to answer it, if I did not— 

1. Bring into view the very important, but rather 
delicate fact, suggested or distinctly alluded to in the 
apostle’s words, that there is even a kind of ante-natal 
nurture which must be taken note of, as having much 
to do with the religious preparations or inductive mer¬ 
cies of childhood. We are physiologically connected 
and set forth in our beginnings, and it is a matter of 
immense consequence to our character, what the connec¬ 
tion is. In our birth, we not only begin to breathe and 
circulate blood, but it is a question hugely significant 
whose the blood may be. For in this we have whole 
rivers of predispositions, good or bad, set running in 
us—as much more powerful to shape our future than all 
tuitional and regulative influences that come after, as 
they are earlier in their beginning, deeper in their inser¬ 
tion, and more constant in their operation. It is a great 
mistake to suppose that men and women, such as are to 
be fathers and mothers, are affected only in their souls 
by religious experience, and not in their bodies. On 
mere physiological principles it can not be true, for the 
mind must temper the body to its own states and 
changes. Living, therefore, in the peace and purity, 
holding the equilibrium, flowing in the liberty, reigning 
in the confidence, of a genuine sanctification, the sub¬ 
jects of such grace are penetrated bodily, all through, 
by the work of the Spirit in their life. Their appetites 
are more nearly in heaven’s order, their passions more 
20 


280 


WHEN AND WHERE 


tempered by reason, tbeir irritabilities more sweetened 
and calmed, and so far they are entered bodily into the 
condition of bealtb. Where tbe constitution was poi¬ 
soned originally by descent, or bas since been broken 
down by excess and abuse, it may not be wholly re¬ 
stored in this life. I do not suppose that it will; but 
since tbe soul is acting itself always into and through 
tbe body, when it becomes a temple of tbe Spirit, tbe 
body also must be, just as tbe Scriptures explicitly 
teach; undergoing, with tbe soul, a remedial process in 
its tempers and humors, and prospering in heaven’s or¬ 
der, even as tbe soul prosperetb. This being true, it is 
impossible, on mere physiological principles, that tbe 
children of a truly sanctified parentage should not be 
advantaged by tbe grace out of which they are born. 
And, if tbe godly character bas been kept up in a long 
line of ancestry, corrupted by no vicious or untoward 
intermarriages, tbe advantage must be still greater and 
more positive. Even temporary changes in tbe Chris¬ 
tian state of character and attainment, will have tbeir 
effect; bow much more tbe godly keeping of a thor¬ 
oughly and evenly sanctified life; bow much more 
such a keeping of inbred grace and faith, in a long line 
of godly ancestors. 

I might even .state tbe case more strongly, bringing 
into tbe comparison a godly and a vicious parentage. 
Take a parentage that bas in it all tbe dyspeptic woes 
of gluttony and self-indulgence, one that is stung and 
maddened by tbe fiery pains of intemperance, one that 
is poisoned and imbruted by tbe excesses of lust, one 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 231 

that is broken by domestic wrongs or exasperated by 
domestic quarrels, one that is fevered by ambitions, one 
that is soured by the morbid humors of envy and de¬ 
feat—lengthen out the catalogue, take in all the sins, 
which, in some true sense, are also vices and have their 
effect on the body, how is it possible, on any principle 
of rational physiology, that the children who are sprung 
of this distempered heritage, should be as pure in their 
affinities, as close to the order of truth, as ready for the 
occupany of all good thoughts, as well governed before 
all government, as ductile in a word to God, as they 
that are born of a glorious lineage in faith and prayer 
and God’s indwelling peace. Nothing could be more 
improbable antecedently, or farther off from the actual 
fact afterward. On the contrary, it is a most dismal and 
hard lot, as every one knows, to be in the succession of 
a bad, or vicious parentage. No heritage of wealth 
could repay, or more than a little soften the bitterness 
of it. 

It is somewhat difficult to investigate the facts of this 
subject, because of the complexities induced by unpro- 
pitious and exceptional marriages. But when such 
marriages are reduced by the more general, and finally 
universal, spread of Christian piety, and when the pitch 
of Christian sanctification is raised, as it will be, by the 
fuller inspiration from God, breaking into his saints all 
over the world, it will be found that children are bom 
as much closer to God, and with predispositions that 
waft them as much more certainly into the ways of duty 
and piety. It will be as if the faith-power of the past 


282 


WHEN AND WHERE 


were descending into the present, flowing on down the 
future, and the general account of the world will be, 
that, as it has been corrupted, so also it is in some 
equally true sense, regenerated from the womb. Pre¬ 
cisely that which is named in Scripture, as the fact ex¬ 
traordinary, will become at last the ordinary and even 
the universal fact. 

Here, then, is the real and true beginning of a godly 
nurture. The child is not to have the sad entail of any 
sensuality, or excess, or distempered passion upon him. 
The heritage of love, peace, order, continence and holy 
courage is to be his. He is not to be morally weakened 
beforehand, in the womb of folly, by the frivolous, 
worldly, ambitious, expectations of parents-to-be, con¬ 
centrating all their nonsense in him. His affinities are 
to be raised by the godly expectations, rather, and 
prayers that go before; by the steady and good aims of 
their industry, by the great impulse of their faith, by 
the brightness of their hope, by the sweet continence 
of their religiously pure love in Christ. Born, thus, of 
a parentage that is ordered in all righteousness, and 
maintains the right use of every thing, especially the 
right use of nature and marriage, the child will have 
just so much of heaven’s life and order in him before¬ 
hand, as have become fixed properties in the type of his 
parentage; and by this ante-natal nurture, will be set 
off in a way of noblest advantage, as respects all safety 
and success, in the grand experiment he has come into 
the world to make. 

Having called your attention to tlrls very important 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 


233 


but strangely disregarded chapter, in the economy of 
Christian nurture, I leave it to be more fully and circum¬ 
stantially developed by your own thoughtful considera¬ 
tion ; for it is a matter which will open itself readily, 
and prove itself by striking and continually recurrir g 
facts to such as have it in their hearts to watch for the 
truth and the duties it requires. We pass now— 

2. To that which is the common field of inquiry, and 
here we raise again the question, where and how early 
does the work of nurture begin ? here to set forth and 
maintain still another answer, which antedates the com¬ 
mon impression, about as decidedly as the one just 
given. The true, and only true answer is, that the 
nurture of the soul and character is to begin just when 
the nurture of the body begins. It is first to be infan¬ 
tile nurture—as such, Christian; then to be a child’s 
nurture; then to be a youth’s nurture—advancing 
by imperceptible gradations, if possible, according to 
the gradations and stages of the growth, or progress 
toward maturity. 

There is, of course, no absolute classification to be 
made here, because there are no absolute lines of dis¬ 
tinction. A kind of proximate and partly ideal dis¬ 
tinction may be made, and I make it simply to serve the 
convenience of my subject—otherwise impossible to be 
handled, so as to secure any right practical conviction 
respecting it. It is the distinction between the age of 
impressions and the age of tuitional influences; or be¬ 
tween the age of existence in the will of the parent , and 
the age of will and personal choice in the child . If the 
20 * 


234 


WHEN AND WHERE 


distinction were laid, between tbe age previous to lan¬ 
guage and tbe age of language, it would amount to 
nearly tbe same thing; for tbe time of personal and 
responsible choice depends on tbe measure of intelli¬ 
gence attained to, and tbe measure of intelligence 
is well represented, outwardly, by tbe degree of de¬ 
velopment in language. Of course it will be under¬ 
stood that we speak, in this distinction, of that which 
is not sharply defined, and is passed at no precise date 
or age. Tbe transition is gradual, and it will even be 
doubtful, when it is passed. No one can say just where 
a given child passes out of tbe field of mere impression 
into tbe field of responsible action. It will be doubtful, 
in about tbe Same degree, when it can be said to have 
come into tbe power of language. We do not even 
know that there is not some infinitesimal development 
of will in tbe child’s first cry, and some instinct of lan¬ 
guage struggling in that cry. Our object in tbe dis¬ 
tinction is not to assume any thing in respect to such 
matters, but simply to accommodate our own ignorance, 
by raising a distribution that enables us to speak of 
times and characteristics truly enough to serve tbe con¬ 
ditions of general accurary, and to assist, in that man¬ 
ner, tbe purposes of our discussion. 

Now tbe very common assumption is that, in what 
we have called tbe age of impressions, there is really 
nothing done, or to be done, for tbe religious character. 
The lack of all genuine apprehensions, in respect to this 
matter, among people otherwise intelligent and awake, 
is really wonderful; it amounts even to a kind of 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 


235 


coarseness. Full of all fondness, and all highest expect¬ 
ation respecting their children, and having also many 
Christian desires for their welfare, they seem never to 
have brought their minds down close enough to the 
soul of infancy, to imagine that any thing of conse¬ 
quence is going on with it. What can they do, till 
they can speak to it ? what can it do, till it speaks ? As 
if there were no process going on to bring it forward 
into language; or as if that process had itself nothing 
to do with the bringing on of intelligence, and no deep, 
seminal working toward a character, unfolding and to 
be unfolded in it. The child, in other words, is to 
come into intelligence through perfect unintelligence! 
to get the power of words out of words themselves, 
and without any experience whereby their meaning 
is developed! to be taught responsibility under moral 
and religious ideas, when the experience has unfolded 
no such ideas! In this first stage, therefore, which 
1 have called the stage of impressions, how very 
commonly will it be found that the parents, even 
Christian parents, discharge themselves, in the most in¬ 
nocently unthinking way possible, of so much as a con¬ 
ception of responsibility. The child can not talk, what 
then can it know? So they dress it in all fineries, 
practice it in shows and swells and all the petty airs 
of foppery and brave assumption, act it into looks 
and manners not fit to be acted any where, provoking 
the repetition of its bad tricks by laughing at them, 
indulging freely every sort of temper towards it, or, it 
may be, filling the house with a din of scolding between 


236 


WHEN AND WHERE 


the parents—all this in simple security, as if their child 
were only a thing, or an ape I What hurt can the sim¬ 
ple creature get from any thing done before it, toward 
it, or upon it, when it can talk of nothing, and will not 
so much as remember any thing it has seen or heard ? 
Doubtless there is a wise care to be had of it, when it 
is old enough to be taught and commanded, but till 
then there is nothing to be done, but simply to foster 
the plaything kindly, enjoy it freely, or abuse it pet¬ 
tishly, at pleasure! 

Just contrary to this, I suspect, and I think it can 
also be shown by sufficient evidence, that more is done 
to affect, or fix the moral and religious character of 
children, before the age of language than after; that the 
age of impressions, when parents are commonly wait¬ 
ing, in idle security, or trifling away their time in mis¬ 
chievous indiscretions, or giving up their children to* 
the chance of such keeping as nurses and attendants 
may exercise, is in fact their golden opportunity; when 
more is likely to be done for their advantage or damage, 
than in all the instruction and discipline of their minor¬ 
ity afterward. 

And something like this I think we should augur 
beforehand, from the peculiar, full-born intensity of the 
maternal affection, at the moment when it first embraces 
the newly arrived object. It scarcely appears to grow, 
never to grow tender and self-sacrificing in its care. It 
turns itself to its charge, with a love that is boundless 
and fathomless, at the first. As if just then and there, 
some highest and most sacred office of motherhood 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 237 

were required to begin. Is it only that the child de¬ 
mands her physical nurture and carefulness ? That is 
not the answer of her consciousness. Her maternity 
scorns all comparison with that of the mere animals. 
Her love, as she herself feels, looks through the body 
into the inborn personality of her child,—the man or 
woman to be. Hay, more than that, if she could sound 
her consciousness deeply enough, she would find a cer¬ 
tain religiousness in it, measurable by no scale of mere 
earthly and temporal love. Here springs the secret of 
her maternity, and its semi-divine proportions. It is 
the call and equipment of God, for a work on the 
impressional and plastic age of a soul. Christianized 
as it should be, and wrought in by the grace of the 
Spirit, the minuteness of its care, its gentleness, its 
patience, its almost divine faithfulness, are prepared for 
the shaping of a soul’s immortality. And, to make the 
work a sure one, the intrusted soul is allowed to have 
no will as yet of its own, that this motherhood may 
more certainly plant the angel in the man, uniting him 
to all heavenly goodness by predispositions from itself, 
before he is united, as he will be, by choices of his own. 
Nothing but this explains and measures the wonderful 
proportions of maternity. 

It will be seen at once, and will readily be taken as 
a confirmation of the transcendent importance of what 
is done, or possible to be done, for children, in their 
impressional and plastic age, that whatever is impressed 
or inserted here, at this early point, must be profoundly 
seminal, as regards all the future developments of the 


238 


WHEN AND WHERE 


character. And though it can not, bj the supposition, 
amount to character, in the responsible sense of that 
term, it may be the seed, in some very important sense, 
of all the future character to be unfolded; just as we 
familiarly think of sin itself, as a character in blame 
when the will is ripe, though prepared, in still another 
view, by the seminal damages and misaffections derived 
from sinning ancestors. So when a child, during the 
whole period of impressions, or passive recipiencies, 
previous to the development of his responsible will, 
lives in the life and feeling of his parents, and they in 
the molds of the Spirit, they will, of course, be shaping 
themselves in him, or him in themselves, and the effects 
wrought in him will be preparations of what he will 
by-and-bye do from himself; seeds, in that manner pos¬ 
sibly, even of a regenerate life and character. 

That we may conceive this matter more adequately 
and exactly, consider, a moment, that whole contour of 
dispositions, affections, tempers, affinities, aspirations, 
which come into power in a soul after the will is set 
fast in a life of duty and devotion. These things, we 
conceive, follow in a sense the will, and then become 
in turn a new element about the will—a new heart, as 
we say, prompting to new acts and a continued life of 
new obedience. Now what I would affirm is, that just 
this same contour of dispositions and affinities may be 
prepared under, and come after, the will of the parents, 
when the child is living in their will, and be ready as a 
new element, or new heart, to prompt the child’s will, 
or put it forward in the choice of all duty, whenever it 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 


239 


is so matured as to choose for itself. Of course these 
regenerated dispositions and affinities, this general dis¬ 
posedness to good, which we call a new heart, supposes 
a work of the Spirit; and, if the parents live in the 
Spirit as they ought, they will have the Spirit for the 
child as truly as for themselves, and the child will be 
grown, so to speak, in the molds of the Spirit, even 
from his infancy. 

This will be yet more probable, if we glance at some 
of the particular facts and conditions involved. Thus 
if we speak of impressions, or the age of impressions, 
and of that as an age prior to language, what kind of 
religious impressions can be raised in a soul, it may be 
asked, when the child is not far enough developed in 
language to be taught any thing about God, or Christ, 
or itself, that belongs to intelligence ? And the suffi¬ 
cient answer must be, that language itself has no mean¬ 
ing till rudimental impressions are first begotten in the 
life of experience, to give it a meaning. Words are 
useful to propagate meanings, or to farther develop and 
combine meanings, but a child would never know the 
meaning of any word in a language, just by hearing 
the sound of it in his ears. He must learn to put the 
meaning into it, by having found that meaning in his 
impressions, and then the word becomes significant. 
And it requires a certain wakefulness and capacity of 
intelligent apprehension, to receive or take up such 
impressions. Thus a dog would never get hold of any 
religious impression at the family prayers, all his life¬ 
time ; but a child will be fast gathering up, out of his 


240 


WHEN AND WHERE 


little life and experience, impressional states and asso¬ 
ciations, that give meanings to the words of prayer, as 
they, in turn, give meanings to the facts of his experi¬ 
ence. All language supposes impressions first made. 
The word light does not signify any thing, till the eye 
has taken the impression of light. The word love is 
unmeaning, to one who has not loved and received love. 
The word God , raises no conception of God, till the 
idea of such a being has been somehow generated and 
associated with that particular sound. How far off is it 
then from all sound apprehensions of fact, to imagine 
that nothing religious can be done for a child till after 
he is far enough developed in language to be taught; 
when in fact he could not be thus developed in lan¬ 
guage at all, if the meanings of language were not 
somehow started in him by the impressions derived 
from his experience. 

Observe, again, how very quick the child’s eye is, in 
the passive age of infancy, to catch impressions, and 
receive the meaning of looks, voices, and motions. It 
peruses all faces, and colors, and sounds. Every senti¬ 
ment that looks into its eyes, looks back out of its 
eyes, and plays in miniature on its countenance. The 
tear that steals down the cheek of a mother’s suppressed 
grief, gathers the little infantile face into a respon¬ 
sive sob. With a kind of wondering silence, which is 
next thing to adoration, it studies the mother in her 
prayer, and looks up piously with her, in that explor¬ 
ing watch, that signifies unspoken prayer. If the child 
is handled fretfully, scolded, jerked, or simply laid aside 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 241 

unaffectionately, in no 'warmth of motherly gentleness, 
it feels the sting of just that which is felt towards it; 
and so it is angered by anger, irritated by irritation, 
fretted by fretfulness; having thus impressed, just that 
kind of impatience or ill-nature, which is felt towards 
it, and growing faithfully into the bad mold offered, as 
by a fixed law. There is great importance, in this man¬ 
ner, even in the handling of infancy. If it is unchris¬ 
tian, it will beget unchristian states, or impressions. 
If it is gentle, even patient and loving, it prepares a 
mood and temper like its own. There is scarcely room 
to doubt, that all most crabbed, hateful, resentful, pas¬ 
sionate, ill-natured characters; all most even, lovely, 
firm and true, are prepared, in a great degree, by the 
handling of the nursery. To these and all such modes 
of feeling and treatment as make up the element of the 
infant’s life, it is passive as wax to the seal. So that if 
we consider how small a speck, falling into the nucleus 
of a crystal, may disturb its form; or, how even a mote 
of foreign matter present in the quickening egg, will 
suffice to produce a deformity; consi lering, also, on the 
other hand, what nice conditions of repose, in one case, 
and what accurately modulated supplies of heat in the 
other, are necessary to a perfect product; then only do 
we begin to imagine what work is going on, in the 
soul of a child, in this first chapter of life, the age of 
impressions. 

It must also greatly affect our judgments on this 
point,'to observe that, when this first age of impres¬ 
sions is gone by, there is, after that, no such thing any 
21 


242 


WHEN AND WHERE 


more as a possibility of absolute control. Thus far tbe 
child has been more a candidate for personality than 
a person. He has been as a seed forming in the cap¬ 
sule of the parent-stem, getting every thing from that 
stem, and fashioned, in its kind, by the fashioning kind 
of that. But now, having been gradually and imper¬ 
ceptibly ripened, as the seed separates and falls off, to 
be another and complete form of life in itself, so the 
child comes out, in his own power, a complete person, 
able to choose responsibly for himself. How he is no 
more in the power of the parent, as before; the domin¬ 
ion., of the older life is supplanted, by the self-asserting 
competency of the younger; what can the old stalk do 
upon the seed that is already ripe ? The transition here 
is very gradual, it is true, covering even a space of 
years; and something may be done for the child’s char¬ 
acter by instruction, by the skillful management of mo¬ 
tives, and the tender solicitudes of parental watching 
and prayer; but less and less, of course, the older the 
child becomes, and the more completely his personal 
responsibility is developed. But how very fearful the 
change, and how much it means, that the child, once 
plastic and passive to the will of the parent, has gotten 
by the point of absolute disposability, and is never 
again to be properly in that will! The perilous power 
of self-care and self-assertion has come, and what is to 
be the result ? And how much does it signify to the 
parent, when he feels his power to be thus growing dif¬ 
ficult, weak, doubtful, or finally quite ended! What a 
conception it is, that he once had his child in abso- 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 243 

lute direction, and the fashioning of his own superior 
will, to dress, to feed, to handle, to play himself into 
his sentiments, be the disposition of his dispositions, 
the temper of his tempers. Was there not something 
great to I>e done then, when the advantage was so 
great—now to be done no more ? It will be difficult 
to shake off that impression; impossible to a really 
thoughtful Christian soul. And if the will, now ma¬ 
tured and gone over into complete self-assertion, rushes 
into all wildness and profligacy, unrestrained and un- 
restrainable, the recollection of a time when it was 
restrainable and could have been molded, even as wax 
itself, will return with inevitable certainty upon the pa¬ 
rents, and taunt, 0 how bitterly, the neglectful ness and 
lightness, by which they cast their opportunity away ! 

I bring into view accordingly, just here, a considera¬ 
tion that goes further to establish the position I am as¬ 
serting, than any other, and one that is naturally sug¬ 
gested by the topic just adverted to. We call this first 
chapter of life the age of impressions; we speak of the 
child as being in a sense passive and plastic, living in 
the will of the parents, having no will developed for 
responsible action. It might be imagined from the use 
of such terms, that the infant or very young child has 
no will at all. But that is not any true conception. It 
has no responsible will, because it is not acquainted, as 
yet, with those laws and limits and conditions of choice 
that make it responsible. Nevertheless it has will, 
blind will, as strongly developed as any other faculty^ 
and sometimes even most strongly of all. The mani* 


244 


WHEN’ AND WHERE 


festations of it are sometimes even frightful. And pre¬ 
cisely this it is which makes the age of impressions, the 
age prior to language and responsible choice, most pro¬ 
foundly critical in its importance. It is the age in 
which the will-power of the soul is to be tamed or sub¬ 
ordinated to a higher control; that of obedience to pa¬ 
rents, that of duty and religion. And, in this view, it is 
that every thing most important to the religious char¬ 
acter turns just here. Is this infant child to fill the 
universe with his complete and total self-assertion, own¬ 
ing no superior, or is he to learn the self-submission 
of allegiance, obedience, duty to God ? Is he to become 
a demon let loose in God’s eternity, or an angel and 
free prince of the realm ? 

That he may be this, he is now given, will and all, 
as wax, to the wise molding-power of control. Begin¬ 
ning, then, to lift his will in mutiny, and swell in self- 
asserting obstinacy, refusing to go or come, or stand, or 
withhold in this or that, let there be no fight begun, or 
issue made with him, as if it were the true thing now 
to break his will, or drive him out of it by mere terrors 
and pains. This willfulness, or obstinacy, is not so 
purely bad, or evil, as it seems. It is partly his feeling 
of himself and you, in which he is getting hold of the 
conditions of authority, and feeling out his limitations. 
No, this breaking of a child’s will to which many well- 
meaning parents set themselves, with such instant, 
almost passionate resolution, is the way they take to 
make him a coward, or a thief, or a hypocrite, or a 
mean-spirited and driveling sycophant—nothing in fact 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 245 

is more dreadful to thought than this breaking of a 
will, when it breaks, as it often does, the personality 
itself, and all highest, noblest firmness of manhood. The 
true problem is different; it is not to break, but to 
bend rather, to draw the will down, or away from self- 
assertion toward self-devotion, to teach it the way of 
submitting to wise limitations, and raise it into the great 
and glorious liberties of a state of loyalty to God. See 
then how it is to be done. The child has no force, 
however stout he is in his will. Take him up then, 
when the fit is upon him, carry him, stand him on hip 
feet, set him here or there, do just that in him which 
he refuses to do in himself—all this gently and kindly 
as if he were capable of maintaining no issue at all 
Do it again and again, as often as may be necessary 
By-and-bye, he will begin to perceive that his obstinae; 
is but the fussing of his weakness; till finally, as tlx 
sense of limitation comes up into a sense of law and 
duty, he will be found to have learned, even before¬ 
hand, the folly of mere self-assertion. And when he 
has reached this point of felt obligation to obedience, 
it will no longer break him down to enfc^ie his com¬ 
pliance, but it will even exalt into greater dignity and 
capacity, that sublime power of self-gwemment, by 
which his manhood is to be most distinguished. 

By a different treatment at the point or crisis just 
named, that is by raising an issue to be driven straight 
through by terror and storm, one of two results almost 
equally bad were likely to follow; the child would 
either have been quite broken down by fear, the lowest 
21 * 


240 


WHEN AND WHERE 


of all possible motives when separated from moral con¬ 
victions, or else would have been made a hundred fold 
more obstinate by his triumph. Nature provided for 
his easy subjugation, by putting him in the hands of a 
superior strength, which could manage him without 
any fight of enforcement—to have him schooled and 
tempered to a customary self-surrender which takes 
nothing from his natural force and manliness. And so 
is accomplished what, in one view, is the great problem 
of life; that on which all duty and allegiance to God, 
in the state even of conversion, depends. 

It only remains to add that we are not to assume the 
comparative unimportance of what is done upon a child, 
in his age of impressions, because there is really no 
character of virtue or vice, of blame or praise, devel¬ 
oped in that age. Be it so—it is so by the supposi¬ 
tion. But the power, the root, the seed, is implanted 
nevertheless, in most cases, of what he will be. Not in 
every case, but often, the seed of a regenerate life is 
implanted—that which makes the child a Christian in 
God’s view, as certainly as if he were already out in 
the testimony and formal profession of his faith. I 
was just now speaking of the dreadful power of will 
or willfulness, some times manifested even in this first 
age, that we have called the age of impressions, and of 
the ways in which, by one kind of mismanagement or 
another, the character may be turned to vices that are 
as opposite, as the vices of meanness and the crimes of 
violence and blood. So it will be found that almost 
every sort of mismanagement, or neglect, plants some 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 


247 


seed of vice and misery that grows out afterwards into 
a character in its own kind. Thus the child by a con¬ 
tinually worry of his little life, under abusive words, 
and harsh, flashy tempers, grows to be a bed of nettles 
in all his personal tempers, and will so be prepared to 
break out, in the age of choice, into almost any vice of 
ill-nature. A child can be pampered in feeding, so as 
to become, in a sense, all body; so that, when he comes 
into choice and responsible action, he is already a con¬ 
firmed sensualist, showing it in the lines of his face, 
even before it appears in his tastes, habits and vices. 
Thus we have a way of wondering that the children of 
this or that family should turn out so poorly, but the 
real fact is, probably, if we knew it, that what we call 
their turning out, is only their growing out, in just that 
which was first grown in, by the mismanagement of 
their infancy and childhood. What they took in as 
impression, or contagion, is developed by choice—not 
at once, perhaps, but finally, after the poison has had 
time to work. And in just the same way, doubtless, 
it may be true, in multitudes of Christian conversions, 
that what appear to be such to others, and also to the 
subjects themselves, are only the restored activity and 
more fully developed results of some predispositional 
state, or initially sanctified property, in the tempers and 
subtle affinities of their childhood. They are now 
born into that by the assent of their own will, which 
they were in before, without their will. What they 
do not remember still remembers them, and now claims 
a right in them. What was before unconscious, flames 


248 


WHEN AND WHERE 


out into consciousness, and they break forth into praise 
and thanksgiving, in that which, long ago, took them 
initially, and touched th^m softly without thanks. For 
there is such a thing as a seed of character in religion, 
preceding all religious development. Even as Calvin, 
speaking of the regenerative grace there may be in the 
heart of infancy itself, testifies—“the work of God is 
not yet without existence, because it is not observed 
and understood by us.” 

By these and many other considerations that might 
be named, it is made clear, I think, to any judicious 
and thoughtful person, that the most important age of 
Christian nurture is the first; that which we have called 
the age of impressions, just that age, in which the du¬ 
ties and cares of a really Christian nurture are so com¬ 
monly postponed, or assumed to have not yet arrived. 
I have no scales to measure quantities of effect in this 
matter of early training, but I may be allowed to ex¬ 
press my solemn conviction, that more, as a general fact, 
is done, or lost by neglect of doing, on a child’s immor¬ 
tality, in the first three years of his life, than in all his 
years of discipline afterwards. And I name this partic¬ 
ular time, or date, that I may not be supposed to lay the 
chief stress of duty and care on the latter part of what I 
have called the age of impressions; which, as it is a mat¬ 
ter somewhat indefinite, may be taken to cover the space 
of three or four times this number of years; the devel¬ 
opment of language, and of moral ideas being only par¬ 
tially accomplished, in most cases, for so long a time. 
Let every Christian father and mother understand, when 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 249 

their child is three years old, that they have done more 
than half of all they will ever do for his character. 
What can be mo re strangely wide of all just apprehen¬ 
sion, than the immense efficacy, imputed by most pa¬ 
rents to the Christian ministry, compared with what 
they take to be the almost insignificant power conferred 
on them in their parental charge and duties. Why, if 
all preachers of Christ could have their hearers, for 
whole months and years, in their own will, as parents 
do their children, so as to move them by a look, a mo 
tion, a smile, a frown, and act their own sentiments and 
emotions oyer in them at pleasure; if, also, a little 
farther on, they had them in authority to command, 
direct, tell them whither to go, what to learn, what to 
do, regulate their hours, their books, their pleasures, 
their company, and call them to prayer oyer their own 
knees every night and morning, who could think it 
impossible, in the use of such a power, to produce 
almost any result ? Should not such a ministry be ex¬ 
pected to fashion all who come under it to newness of 
life ? Let no parent, shifting off his duties to his chil¬ 
dren, in this manner, think to have his defects made 
up, and the consequent damages mended afterwards, 
when they have come to their maturity, by the compar¬ 
atively slender, always doubtful, efficacy of preaching 
and pulpit harangue. 

If now I am right in the view I have been trying to 
establish, it will readily occur to you that irreparable 
damage may be and must often be done by the self- 
indulgence (if those parents, who place their children 


250 


WHEN AND WHERE 


mostly in the charge of nurses and attendants for 
just those years of their life, in which the greatest and 
most absolute effects are to be wrought in their charac¬ 
ter. The lightness that prevails, on this point, is really 
astonishing. Many parents do not even take pains to 
know any thing about the tempers, the truthfulness, 
the character generally, of the nurses to whom their 
children are thus confidingly trusted. No matter—the 
child is too young to be poisoned, or at all hurt, by 
their influence. And so they give over, to these faith¬ 
less and often cruelly false hirelings of the nursery, to 
be always with them, under their power, associated with 
their persons, handled by their roughness, and im¬ 
printed, day and night, by the coarse, bad sentiments 
of their voices and faces, these helpless, hapless beings 
whom they call their children, and think they are really 
making much of, in the instituting of a nursery for 
them and their keeping. Such a mother ought to see 
that she is making much more of herself than of her 
child. This whole scheme of nurture is a scheme of 
self-indulgence. Now is the time when her little one 
most needs to see her face, and hear her voice, and feel her 
gentle hand. Now is the time when her child’s eternity 
pleads most entreatingly for the benefit of her motherly 
charge and presence. What mother would not be dis¬ 
mayed by the thought of having her family grow up 
into the sentiments of her nurse, and come forward into 
life as being in the succession to her character! And 
yet how often is this most exactly what she has 
provided for. 


THE NURTURE BEGINS. 


251 


Again, it is very clear that, in this early kind of nur¬ 
ture, faithfully maintained, there is a call for the great¬ 
est personal holiness in the parents, and that just those 
conditions are added, which will make true holiness 
closest to nature, and most beautifully attractive—saving 
it from all the repulsive appearances of severity and sanc¬ 
timony. In this charge and nurture of infant children, 
nothing is to be done by an artificial, lecturing process; 
nothing, or little by what can be called government. 
We are to get our effects chiefly by just being what we 
ought, and making a right presence of love and life to 
our children. They are in a plastic age that is receiv¬ 
ing its type, not from our words, but from our spirit, 
and whose character is shaping in the molds of ours. 
Living under this conviction, we are held to a sound 
verity and reality in every thing. The defect of our 
character is not to be made up here, by the sanctity of 
our words; we must be all that we would have our 
children feel and receive. Thus, if a man were to be 
set before a mirror, with the feeling that the exact im¬ 
age of what he is, for the day, is there to be produced 
and left as a permanent and fixed image forever, to what 
carefulness, what delicate sincerity of spirit would he 
be moved. And will he be less moved to the same, 
when that mirror is the soul of his child ? 

Inducted, thus, into a more profoundly real holiness, 
we shall, at the same time, grow more natural in it. 
The family quality of our piety, living itself into our 
children, will moisten the dry individualism we suffer, 
relieve the eccentricities we display, set purity in the 


252 


WHEN AND WHEKE. 


place of bustle and presumption, growth in the place of 
conquest, sound health in the place of spasmodic exalt¬ 
ations ; for when a conviction is felt in Christian fami¬ 
lies, that living is to be a means of grace, and as God will 
suffer it, a regenerating power, then will our piety be 
come a domestic spirit, and as much more tender, as it 
is closer to the life of childhood. Now, we have a 
kind of piety that contains, practically speaking, only 
adults, or those who are old enough to reflect and act 
for themselves, and it is as if we lived in an adult world , 
where every one is for himself. If we could abolish 
also distinctions of age, and sex, and office, we should 
only make up a style of religion somewhat drier and 
farther off from nature than we now have. We can 
never come into the true mode of living that God has 
appointed for us, until we regard each generation as 
hovering over the next, acting itself into the next, and 
casting thus a type of character in the next, before it 
comes to act for itself. Then we shall have gentle cares 
and feelings; then the families will become bonds of 
spiritual life; example, education and government, 
being Christian powers, will be regulated by a Christian 
spirit; the rigidities of religious principle will be soft¬ 
ened by the tender affections of nature twining among 
them, and the common life of the house dignified by 
the sober and momentous cares of the life to come. 
And thus Christian piety, being oftener a habit in the 
soul than a conquest over it, will be as much more 
respectable and consistent as it is earlier in the birth 
and closer to nature. 


II. 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 

<! For I know him, that he will command his children and Ids holism 
hold after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.”— Genesis .. 
xvni. 19. 

The real point of the declaration, here, is not that 
Abraham will command his children, but that he is 
such a man, having such qualities or qualifications as 
to be able to command, certain to command, and train 
them into an obedient and godly life. The declaration 
is, you will observe—“For I know him;” not simply 
and directly—“For I know the fact.” Every thing 
turns on what is in him ) as a father and householder—• 
his qualifications, dispositions, principles, and modes of 
life—and the declaration is, that what he is to do, will 
certainly come out of what he is. He will certainly 
produce, or train a godly family, because it is in him, 
as a man, to do nothing else or less. The subject raised 
then by the declaration is, not so much family training 
and government, as it is— 

The personal and religious qualifications , or qualifica¬ 
tions of character , necessary to success in such family 
training and government. 

There is almost no duty or work, in this world, that 
does not require some outfit of qualifications, in order 
to the doing of it well. We all understand that some 
22 


254 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


kind of preparation is necessary to fill the place of a 
magistrate, teach a school, drill a troop of soldiers, or 
do any such thing, in a right manner. Nay, we admit 
the necessity of serving some kind of apprenticeship, 
in order to become duly qualified for the calling, only 
of a milliner, or a tailor. And yet, as a matter of fact, 
we go into what we call the Christian training of our 
children, without any preparation for it whatever, and 
apparently without any such conviction of negligence 
or absurdity, as at all disturbs our assurance in what we 
do. Not that young parents, and especially young 
mothers, are not often heard lamenting their conscious 
insufficiency for the charge that is put upon them, but 
that, in such regrets, they commonly mean nothing 
more than that they feel very tenderly, and want to do 
better things than, in fact, any body can. It does not 
mean, as a general thing, that they are practically en¬ 
deavoring to get hold of such qualifications as they 
want, in order to their Christian success. After all, it 
is likely to be assumed that they have their sufficient 
equipment in the tender instinct of their natural affec¬ 
tion itself. So they go on, as in a kind of venture, to 
command, govern, manage, punish, teach, and turn 
about the way of their child, in just such tempers, and 
ways of example and views of life, as chance to be the 
element of their own disfigured, ill-begotten character, 
at the time. This, in short, is their sin—the undoing, 
as it will by-and-bye appear, of their children—that they 
undertake their most sacred office, without any sacred 
qualifications; govern without self-government, dis« 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


255 


charge the holiest responsibilities irresponsibly, and 
thrust their children into evil, by the evil and bad mind, 
out of which their training proceeds. 

I know not any thing that better shows the utter in¬ 
competency of mere natural affection as an equipment 
for the parental office, or that, in a short way, proves 
the fixed necessity in it, of some broader competency 
and higher qualification, than just to glance at the 
real cruelties, even commonly perpetrated, under just 
those tender, faithful instigations of natural affection, 
that we so readily expect to be a kind of infallible 
protection to the helplessness of infancy. How often is 
it a fact, that the fondest parents, owing to some want 
of insight, or of patience, or even to some uninstructed, 
only half intelligent desire to govern their child, will 
do it the greatest wrongs—stinging every day and hour, 
the little defenseless being, committed to their love, 
with the sense of bitter injustice; driving in the 
ploughshare of abuse and blame upon its tender feeling, 
by harsh words and pettish chastisements, when, in fact, 
the very thing in the child that annoys them is, that 
they themselves have thrown it into a fit of uneasiness 
and partial disorder, by their indiscreet feeding; or that 
in some appearance of irritability, or insubjection, it has 
only not the words to speak of its pain, or explain its 
innocence. The little child’s element of existence be¬ 
comes, in this manner, not seldom, an element of bitter 
wrong, and the sting of wounded justice grows in, so 
to speak, poisoning the soul all through, by its immed¬ 
icable rancor. The pain of such wrong goes deeper, 


256 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


too, than many fancy. No other creature suffers under 
conscious injury so intensely. And the mischief done 
is only aggravated by the fact that the sufferer has no 
power of redress, and has no alternative permitted, but 
either to be cowed into a weak and cringing submission, 
or else, when his nobler mature has too much stuff in it 
for that, to be stiffened in hate and the bitter grudges 
of wrong. I know not any thing more sad to think of, 
than the cruelties put upon children in this manner. 
It makes up a chapter which few persons read, and 
which almost every body takes for granted can not 
exist. For the honor of our human nature, I wish it 
could not; and that what we call maternal affection, the 
softest, dearest, most self-sacrificing of all earthly forms 
of tenderness and fidelity, were, at least, sufficient to 
save the dishonor, which, alas! it is not; for these 
wrongs are, in fact, the cruelties of motherhood, and as 
often, I may add, of an even over-fond motherhood, as 
any—wrongs of which the doers are unconscious, and 
which never get articulated, save by the sobbings of 
the little bosom, where the sting of injury is felt. 

Here, then, at just the point where we should, least 
of all, look for it, viz: at the point of maternal affec¬ 
tion itself, we have displayed, in sadly convincing evi¬ 
dence, the need and high significance of those better 
qualifications of mind and character, by which the 
training of children becomes properly Christian, and 
upon which, as being such, the success of that training 
depends. Few persons, I apprehend, have any concep- 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 257 

tion, on the other hand, of the immense number and 
sweep of the disqualifications that, in nominally or 
even really Christian parents, go in to hinder, and spoil 
of all success, the religious nurture of their children. 
Sometimes the disqualification is this, and sometimes it 
is that; sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious; 
sometimes observable by others and well understood, and 
sometimes undiscovered. The variety is infinite, and 
the modes of combination subtle, to such a degree, that 
persons taken to be eminently holy in their life, will 
have all their prayers and counsels blasted, by some 
hidden fatality, whose root is never known, or sus¬ 
pected, whether by others, or possibly by themselves. 
The wonder that children, whose parents were in high 
esteem for their piety, should so often grow up into a 
vicious and ungodly life, would, I think, give way to 
just the contrary wonder, if only some just conception 
were had of the various, multifarious, unknown, unsus¬ 
pected disqualifications, by which modes of nurture, 
otherwise good, are fatally poisoned. 

Sometimes, for example, it is a fatal mischief, going 
before on the child, but probably unknown to the 
world, that the parents, one or both, or it may be the 
mother especially, does not accept the child willingly, 
but only submits to the maternal office and charge, as 
to some hard necessity. This charge is going to detain 
her at home, and limit her freedom. Or it will take her 
away from the shows and pleasures for which she is liv¬ 
ing. Or it will burden her days and nights with cares 
that weary her self-indulgence. Or she is not fond of 
22 * 


258 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


children, and never means to be fond of them—they are 
not worth the trouble they cost. Indulging these and 
such like discontents, unwisely and even cruelly pro¬ 
voked, not unlikely, by the unchristian discontents and 
foolish speeches of her husband, she poisons both her¬ 
self and her child beforehand, and receives it with no 
really glad welcome, when she takes it to her bosom. 
Strange mortal perversity that can thus repel, as a harsh 
intrusion, one of God’s dearest gifts; that which is the 
date of the house in its coming, and comes to unseal a 
new passion, whereby life itself shall be duplicated in 
meaning, as in love and duty! This abuse of marriage 
is, in fact, an offense against nature, and is no doubt 
bitterly offensive to God. Though commonly spoken of, 
in a way of astonishing lightness, it is just that sin, by 
which every good possibility of the family is corrupted. 
What can two parents do for the child, they only sub¬ 
mit to look upon, and take as a foundling to their care ? 
If they have some degree of evidence in them that they 
are Christian disciples, they will have fatally clouded 
that evidence, by a contest with God’s Providence, so 
irreverent to Him, and so cruel to their child. If now, 
at last, they somewhat love the child, which is theirs 
by compulsion, what office of a really Christian nurture 
can they fill in its behalf? They are under a complete 
and total disqualification, as respects the duties of their 
charge. They are out of rest in God, out of confidence 
toward Him, hindered in their prayers, lost to that 
sweetness of love and peace which ought to be the ele¬ 
ment of their house. Delving on thus, from such a 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


259 


point of beginning, and assuming tbe possible chance 
of success, in what they may do in the spirit of such 
a beginning, is simply absurd. What can they do in 
training a child for God, which they have accepted, 
at his hands, only as being thrust upon them by 
compulsion ? 

I might speak of other disqualifications that have a 
similar character, as implying some disagreement with 
Providence. But it must suffice to say generally, that 
there can be no such thing as a genuine Christian nur¬ 
ture that is out of peace with God’s Providence—in 
any respect. On the contrary, it is when that peace is 
the element of the house, and sweetens every thing in 
it—pain, sickness, loss, the bitter cup of poverty, 
every ill of adversity or sting of wrong—then it is, and 
there, as nowhere else, that children are most sure to 
grow up into God’s beauty, and a blessed and good life. 
The child that is born to such keeping, and lovingly 
lapped in the peaceful trust of Providence, is born to a 
glorious heritage. On the other hand, where the en¬ 
deavor and life-struggle of the house is, at bottom, a 
fight with Providence; envious, eager, anxious, out of 
content, out of rest, full of complaint and railings, it 
is impossible that any thing Christian should grow in 
such an element. The disqualification is complete. 

Another whole class of disqualifications require to be 
named by themselves; those I mean which are caused 
by a bad or false morality in the parties, at some point 
where the failure is not suspected, and misses being 


260 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


corrected by tbe slender and very partial experience 
of tbeir disciplesbip. 

They are persons, for example, who make much of 
principles in their words, and really think that they are 
governed by principles, when, in fact, they do every 
thing for some reason of policy, and value their princi¬ 
ples, more entirely than they know, for what they are 
worth in the computations of policy. Contrivance, 
artifice, or sometimes cunning, is the element of the 
house. A subtle, inveterate habit of scheming creeps 
into all the reasons of duty; and duty is done, not for 
duty’s sake, but for the reasons, or prudential benefits 
to be secured by it. Even the praying of the house 
takes on a prudential air, much as if it were done for 
some reason not stated. A stranger in the house, see¬ 
ing no scandalous wrong, but a fine show of principle, 
has a certain sense of coldness upon him, which he can 
not account for. How much of true Christian nurture 
there may be in such a house, it is not difficult to 
judge. Here, probably, is going to be one of the 
cases, where everybody wonders that children brought 
up so correctly, turn out so badly. It is not under¬ 
stood that such children were brought up to know prin¬ 
ciples, only as a stunted undergrowth of prudence, and 
that now the result appears. 

Again there is, in some persons, who appear, in all 
other respects, to be Christian, a strange defect of truth 
or truthfulness. They are not conscious of it. They 
would take it as a cruel injustice, were they only to 
suspect their acquaintances of holding such an estimate 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


261 


of them. And yet there is a want of truth in every 
sort of demonstration they make. It is not their words 
only that lie, but their voice, air, action, their every 
putting forth has a lying character. The atmosphere 
they live in is an atmosphere of pretense. Their vir¬ 
tues are affectations. Their compassions and sympa¬ 
thies are the airs they put on. Their friendship is their 
mood and nothing more. And yet they do not know 
it. They mean, it may be, no fraud. They only cheat 
themselves so effectually as to believe, that what they 
are only acting is their truth. And, what is difficult to 
reconcile, they have a great many Christian sentiments, 
they maintain prayer as a habit, and will sometimes 
speak intelligently of matters of Christian experience. 
But how dreadful must be the effect of such a charac¬ 
ter, on the simple, trustful soul of a little child. When 
the crimen falsi is in every thing heard, and looked 
upon, and done, he may grow up into a hypocrite, or a 
thief, but what shall make him a genuine Christian ? 

In the same manner, I could go on to show a multi¬ 
tude of disqualifications for the office of a genuine 
Christian nurture, that are created by a bad or defect¬ 
ive morality, in parents who live a credibly Christian 
life. They make a great virtue, it may be, of frugality 
or economy, and settle every thing into a scale of insup¬ 
portable parsimony and meanness. Or, they make a 
praise of generous living, and run it into a profligate 
and spendthrift habit. Or, they make such a virtue of 
honor and magnanimity, as to set the opinions and 
principles of men in deference, above the principles of 


262 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 

God. Or, they get their chief motives of action ont of 
the appearances of virtue, and not out of its reali¬ 
ties. There is no end to the impostures of bad mo¬ 
rality, that find a place in the lives of reputably Chris¬ 
tian persons. They are generally too subtle to be 
detected by the inspection of their consciousness, and 
very commonly pass unobserved by others. And yet 
they have power to poison the nurture of the house, 
even though it appears to be, in some respects, Chris¬ 
tian. Hence the profound necessity that Christian pa¬ 
rents, consciously meaning to bring up their children 
for God, should make a thorough inspection of their 
morality itself, to find if there be any bad spot in it; 
knowing that, as certainly as there is, it will more or 
less fatally corrupt their children. 

We have still another whole class of disqualifications 
to speak of, that belong, as vices, to the Christian life 
itself, and will, as much more certainly, be ruinous in 
their effects. Some of them would never be thought 
of as disqualifications for the Christian training of chil¬ 
dren, and yet they are so, in a degree to even cut off 
the reasonable hope of success. Probably a great part 
of the cases of disaster, that occur in the training of 
Christian families, are referable to these Christian vices, 
which are commonly not put down as evidences of 
apostasy, or any radical defect of Christian principle, 
because they are not supposed to imply a discontinu¬ 
ance of prayer, or a fatal subjection to the spirit of this 
world. 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


268 


Sanctimony, for example, as we commonly nse the 
term, is one of these vices. It describes what we com 
ceive to be a saintly, or over-saintly air and manner, 
when there is a much inferior degree of sanctity in the 
life. There is no hypocrisy in it, for there is no inten¬ 
tion to deceive; but there is a legal, austere, conscien¬ 
tiousness, which keeps on all the solemnities and longi¬ 
tudes of expression, just because there is too little of 
God’s love and joy in the feeling, to play in the smiles 
gladness and liberty. Now it is the little child’s 
way, to get his first lessons from the looks and faces 
round him. And what can be worse, or do more to 
set him off from all piety, by a fixed aversion, than to 
have gotten such impressions of it only, as he takes 
from this always unblessed, tedious, look of sanctimony. 
What can a poor child do, when the sense of nature 
and natural life, the smiles, glad voices, and cheerful 
notes of play, are all overcast and gloomed, or, as it 
were, forbidden, by that ghostly piety in which it is 
itself being brought up ? And yet the world will won¬ 
der immensely at the strange perversity of the child 
that grows up under such a saintly training, to be 
known as a person mortally averse to religion ! Why, 
it would be a much greater wonder if he could think 
of it even with patience! 

Bigotry is another of these Christian vices, and yet 
no one will assume his infallible capacity, in the matter 
of Christian training, as confidently as the bigot. Has 
he not the truth? is he not opposite, as possible, to 
all error? has any man a greater abhorrence of all 


264 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


laxity and all variation from the standards? Is he not 
in a way of speaking out always, and giving faithful 
testimonies in his house? Yes, that must be admitted; 
and yet he is a man that mauls every truth of God, and 
every gentle and lovely feeling of a genuinely Chris¬ 
tian character. His intensities are made by his nar¬ 
rowness and hate, and not by his love. He fills the 
house with a noise of piety, and may dog his children 
possibly into some kind of conformity with his opin¬ 
ions. But he is much more likely, by this brassy din, 
to only stun their intelligence and make them incapable 
of any true religious impressions. There is no class of 
children that turn out worse, in general, than the chil¬ 
dren of the Christian bigots. 

The vice of Christian fanaticism operates, in another 
and different way, but with a commonly disastrous 
effect. The fanatic is a man who mixes false fire with 
the true, and burns with a partly diabolical heat. He 
means to be superlatively Christian, but it happens that 
what he gets, above others, is the addition of something 
to his passions, which would be more genuine, if it 
were in his affections. He scorches, but never melts. 
He is most impatient of what is ordinary and common, 
and does not sufficiently honor the solid works and ex¬ 
periences of that goodness which is fixed and faithful. 
This kind of character makes a fiery element for child¬ 
ish piety to grow in. What can the child become, or 
l°a.Tn to be, where every thing is in this key of excess ? 
It is as if there were a simoon of piety blowing through 
the house, and it dries away all gentle longings and 



PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


265 


holiest sympathies of the child’s affectionate nature, so 
that all attractions God-ward are suspended. A certain 
violence and harshness in the parental fanaticism, 
wakens often the sense of injustice too, or hate, and 
makes the superlative piety appear to be no better, 
after all, than it might be. 

Another Christian vice is created by a censorious 
habit. Not by that habit of judging and condemning, 
which takes a pleasure in condemnation itself—that is 
the vice of a Christless character, not of a Christian— 
but there is a large class of disciples who think it a 
kind of duty, and a just acknowledgment of the fact 
of human depravity, to be seeing always dark things. 
They judge evil judgments because they will be more 
faithful, and will be only doing to others just as they 
do to themselves. This habit is like a poisonous atmos¬ 
phere in the house. It kills all springing sentiments 
of confidence and esteem. That charity which believ- 
eth all things, and hopeth all things, appears to be 
already stifled in it. What shall a child aspire to, when 
there is no really estimable growth, and good, and 
beauty, any where ? 

It is a great vice also, as regards the Christian train¬ 
ing of a family, that there is a habit in the parents of 
receiving nothing by authority, and really disowning 
authority in all matters of religious. God reigns him¬ 
self by authority, and because he is God; and parents 
are to govern by authority, partly, in the same manner. 
Tf the parent is a debater with God in every thing, say¬ 
ing always No, to God, till he has gotten his proofs, the 


266 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


spirit will go through the house. The children will 
demand a reason for every thing required, and will put 
the parents always on trial, instead of being put under 
authority themselves. Nothing breaks down faster the 
religious conscience, or untones more completely the 
divine affinities of the childish nature, than to have lost 
the feeling, ceased to hear the ring, of authority. Abra¬ 
ham could believe God’s words, and so it was in him to 
command his children after him. 

Anxiousness is another infirmity, or vice of eharac- 
acter, that has always a noxious effect in the training 
of Christian families. "Where there is but a little faith, 
there is apt to be great anxiousness. And nothing will 
so dreadfully torment the life of a child, as to be per¬ 
petually teased by the anxious words and looks and in¬ 
terferences of this unhappy superintendence. And if 
the pretext given is a concern for the child’s piety, the 
effect is only so much more disastrous. What can he 
think of piety, when it has only worried him at every 
play and every natural pleasure of his life? Just con¬ 
trary to this feeble, half-believing, half-Christian vice 
of anxiety, the parental habit should be one of confi¬ 
dence ; gladdened always in the faith that God is the 
child’s covenanted keeper, and will never fail to guard 
the trust that is faithfully committed to his hands, never 
allow to grow up in sin what parental fidelity is train* 
ing, by all reasonable diligence, for a godly life 

This enumeration of the moral and religious vices, 
that spot the beauty and mar the completeness of char 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


267 


acter, in one way or another, of almost all merely ordi¬ 
nary Christians, could be indefinitely extended. Noth¬ 
ing, in fact, is farther off, generally, from the truth, than 
the assumption, by nominally Christian parents, of their 
sufficiency, or their properly qualified state, as regards 
the training of their children. They are almost all dis¬ 
qualified, or under-qualified, to such a degree to make 
their work perilous, and as ought to fill them with real 
concern for their success. What are we all, in the 
merely initial state of Christian living, but diseased pa¬ 
tients, just entered into hospital? We are not all in 
the same sort of weakness and defect, but all weak and 
defective—one-sided, passionate, broken in principle, 
corrupted by mixed motive, lame in faith. How foolish 
then is it for us to be assuming that, because we have 
come to Christ and begun to be disciples, we are ready, 
of course, for the holy nurture and safe ordering of our 
families. How foolish, also, to be wondering, as we so 
often do, that the children of one or another Christian, 
or reputedly good Christian family, turn out so ill— 
as if it were some evidence of a singularly perverse and 
reprobate nature in such children. Little do we know 
what subtle poisons were hid in what we took to be the 
good Christian piety of those families. After all, it 
may have been much less good, or more exceptionably 
good, than we thought. 

It may occur to some of you, as a discouraging dis¬ 
advantage, that, where one parent is duly qualified for 
the training of the children in piety, the other is not, 
but is in fact, a real hindrance to the right and safe pro* 


268 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


ceeding of the endeavor. The parents are never equally 
well qualified; and one, or the other of them, is likely 
to be a good deal out of line, in some kind of personal 
defect, or obliquity of practice. Sometimes one of 
them will be a purely worldly-minded person, or an 
unbeliever, or, it may be, even fatally corrupted by 
vicious habits. There is, accordingly, no hope of concert 
in the endeavor to train the children up in piety. And 
this, the other party, who is more commonly the mother, 
may be tempted in some hour of discouragement to 
think, amounts to a fatal disqualification, such as quite 
takes away the rational confidence of success. Let me 
come to her aid, in the assurance that God connects 
Hi nself even the more certainly with one party, if only 
there is, in that one, a believing and truly faithful 
spi.it, prepared for the work. .He pledges himself in 
formal promise to one party, in all such conditions, 
declaring that the believing wife sanctifies, takes away 
the defect of, the unbelieving husband. Let her also 
consider what is said of young Timothy—how the 
apostle figures the faith of the good grandmother, and 
her daughter the good mother, descending on Timothy 
in the third generation, when his father, all this time, 
was a Greek, probably an unbeliever and idolater. 
There was not force enough, you perceive, in all that 
father’s influence to break the descent of the faith of 
these two godly mothers upon his son. 

This, then, is the conclusion to which we are brought; 
that qualifications are wanted for this work as for almost 
no other, and that where they are really had, if it be 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 269 

only by one party, they are not likely to fail. But 
bow shall they be obtained ? that is the question. Who 
is subtle enough to go through this hunt of the charac¬ 
ter, and actually find every loose joint of morality in 
his practice, every vice of defect, or distemper, in 
in his Christian life ? No one, I answer—that is impos¬ 
sible. No weeding process, carried on by ourselves, 
ever did or can extirpate our evils. The only true 
method here is the method of faith; to be more per¬ 
fectly and wholly trusted to God, more singly, simply 
Christian. God’s touch in us can feel out every thing; 
every most subtle spot of wrong or weakness he can 
heal. The reason why we have so many of these spots 
and disqualifying vices is, that we are only a little 
Christian. Whereas, if we could be fully entered into 
Christ’s keeping, and have our whole consciousness 
overspread and clothed by his righteousness, we should 
live, in every part, and be kept in holy equilibrium 
above our defects and disorders, all the time. Put ye 
on the Lord Jesus Christ then as a complete investiture, 
and there will be no poison flowing down upon your 
children, from any thing in your life and example. If 
Christ is made, to those who trust in him, wisdom, 
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, what is 
there that he can not and will not be made? Wonder¬ 
ful is the completeness of any soul that is complete 
in him. How pure and perfect the morality, how 
wise the discretion, how gentle and full, and free, the 
life in which he lives! The house and its discipline 
become a most joyous element to children, when thus 
23 * 


270 


PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 


administered. Every thing good in it is welcome, even 
the restraints and supervisions; for they have a general 
air of confidence and hope and gentle feeling, that wins 
and not repels. Even authority itself is welcome, be¬ 
cause it is enforced by character, and not by tones of 
violence, or dictatorial airs of heat and menace. Who¬ 
ever comes thus into God’s full love, to be in it and of 
it, has a true equipment for the family administration. 
If it can be said—Herein is Love, what else can really 
be wanting? This bond of perfectness, brings all 
needed qualifications with it, so that when the love or 
the faith working by it, really reigns and tempers the 
man by its impulse, it can truly be said, as of Abra¬ 
ham—For I know him, that he will command his chil¬ 
dren and his household after him, and they shall keep 
the way of the Lord. 


III. 


PHYSICAL NURTURE, TO BE A MEANS OP 
GRACE. 

“Feed me with feed convenient forme, lest I be full and deny thee, 
and say, who is the Lord V'—Proverbs, xxx. 8-9. 

A most fit subject of prayer! And if the feeding 
of an adult person, sucb as Agur, has a connection so 
intimate with his religious life and character, how 
much more the feeding and the physical nurture of a 
child. I use the text, therefore, to introduce, for our 
present consideration, as a kind of first point, the food 
or feeding of children, and their physical treatment 
generally. 

It will not be incredible to any thoughtful person, 
least of all to any genuinely philosophic person, that 
the treatment and fare of the body has much to do with 
the quality of the soul, or mind—its affinities, passions, 
aspirations, tempers; its powers of thought and senti¬ 
ment, its imaginations, its moral and religions develop¬ 
ment. For the body is not only a house to the mind 
as other houses are, which we may live in for a time 
with no perceptible effect on our character, but it is a 
house in the sense of being the mind’s own organ; its 
external life itself, the medium of all its action, the in¬ 
strument of its thought and feeling, the inlet also 


272 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


of all its knowledges and impressions, and the instiga¬ 
tor, by a thousand reactions, of all such spiritual riot 
and corruption as have had their leaven brewed in as 
many physical abuses and disorders. So intimate is 
this connection of mind and body, so very close to real 
oneness are they, that no one can, by any possibility, 
be a Christian in his mind, and not be in some sense a 
Christian in his body. If his soul is to be a temple of 
the Holy Ghost, then his body must be. If his soul is 
under government, then his body will be. And if his 
body is not under government, then his soul, by no 
possibility, can be; save that, in every such case, it 
will and must be under the government of the body; 
subject to its power, swayed by all its excesses and 
distempers. 

Hence that most determined, almost proud, resolve 
of the apostle, when he declares—“I will not be 
brought under the power of any.” Under the body ? 
Ho! he will scorn that low kind of thraldom. Meats, 
drinks, appetites—none of these shall have the mastery 
in him. He will assert the supreme right of the soul 
or person, above the house it lives in; so God’s pre¬ 
eminent right in the soul. He will say to the body— 
“ stay thou down there”—as they that fast do, in fast¬ 
ing ; and, what is more profoundly, more scientifically 
rational than fasting, when it is practiced in the real 
insight of its reasons? It is the soul rising up, in 
God’s name, to assert herself over the body; over its 
appetites, passions, tempers, and, if possible, distempers. 
And how often the poor, coarse, stupid, sensual, fast- 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 273 

bound slaves of the body, calling themselves disciples, 
need this kind of war, and a regular campaign of it, to get 
their souls uppermost and trim themselves for the race. 

One must be a very inobservant person, not to have 
noticed, that all his finest and most God-ward aspira¬ 
tions are smothered under any load of excess, or over- 
indulgence. It is as if the body were calling down all 
the other powers, even those of poetry, magnanimity, 
and religion, to help it do the scarcely possible work 
of digestion. At that point they gather. The sense of 
beauty is there, and the soul’s angel of hope, and the 
testimony of God’s peace, and the music of devotion, 
and the thrill of sermons, dosing, all together, and sough¬ 
ing in dull dreams round the cargo of poppies in the 
hold of the body. To raise any fresh sentiment is now 
impossible. Even prayer itself is mired, and can not 
struggle out. The news of some best friend’s death 
can only be answered by dry interjections, and forced 
postures of grief, that will not find their meaning till 
to-morrow. 

And much the same thing holds true, only under a 
different form, when the body is prematurely diseased 
and broken, by the excesses of self-indulgence. Its 
distempers will distemper the higher nature; its pains 
prick through into the sensibilities, even of the spiritual 
nature. Out of the pits of the body, dark clouds will 
steam up into the chambers of the soul, and all the 
devils of dyspepsia will be hovering in them, to scare 
away its peace, and choke the godlike possibilities, out 
of which its better motions should be springing. 


274 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


So important a thing, for the religious life of the 
soul, is the feeding of the body. Vast multitudes of 
disciples have no conception of the fact. Living in 
a swine’s body, regularly over-loaded and oppressed 
every day of their lives, they wonder that so great dif¬ 
ficulties and discouragements rise up to hinder the 
Christian clearness of their soul. Could they but look 
into Agur’s prayer, and take the meaning—iced me 
with food convenient for me, lest I be full, and deny 
thee, and say, who is the Lord ?—they would find a 
real gospel in it. And making it truly their own, 
they would dismiss, at once, whole armies of doubts; 
their faith would get wings to rise; they would rest 
their soul in an element of power, and peace, and sweet¬ 
ness, and would run the way of God’s commandments 
with a wonderful clearness and liberty. 

I have spoken, thus briefly, to a fact of adult expe¬ 
rience, because it is adult conviction which my subject 
needs to obtain. To simply look on children from 
without, and tell what effects will be wrought on their 
religious tempers and habit by their feeding, and the 
general nurture of their body, will not carry any depth 
of conviction by itself; for there is no creature of God 
less adequately understood, or conceived, than a child. 
And therefore it is that I appeal to parents, in this 
manner, requiring them to make some observation of 
themselves; to notice what becomes of them, and their 
sentiments, and senses of Christ and of God, when they 
are down under the burdens of an overloaded, or per 
manently diseased body. 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 


275 


The principle I am here asserting, as regards the re¬ 
ligious import of feeding and bodily nurture, in the case 
of children, is the same on which the child Daniel and 
his friends acted, in the choice of their very simple and 
temperate diet. Whether Daniel had been brought up 
from his infancy in this manner does not appear. He 
may have been prompted to this choice, by a purely 
divine impulse. But whether he came into it by one 
method or the other, makes little difference; for, in 
either case, the most important matter is to observe the 
result, and that such kind of feeding was chosen, or in¬ 
stituted, for the sake of the result that would follow, 
on perfectly natural principles, viz: to give greater 
clearness to the religious perceptions and sentiments of 
the soul. The body grew toward perfect health, be¬ 
cause it was burdened and distempered by no excesses. 
And the soul was just as much more open to God and 
the sense of unseen things, as the body was more 
serenely and blissfully well, in its physical condition. 
In this manner the child’s nature grew apace, in the 
molds of a perfectly evened judgment, and was also 
wonderfully opened to God and all highest discoveries 
of his will. In a certain sense, he became a great 
prophet by his physical nurture—“ God gave him knowl¬ 
edge, thus, and skill, in all learning and wisdom, and 
he had understanding in all visions and dreams.” His 
feeding stood with his health, and with all purest affin¬ 
ities and deepest openings toward God. 

Let us glance a moment, now, at some of the points 


276 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


here involved, and distinguish, if we can, the results 
that are always depending on the right feeding of 
children. 

The child is taken, when his training begins, in a 
state of naturalness, as respects all the bodily tastes and 
tempers, and the endeavor should be to keep him in 
that key; to let no stimulation of excess, or delicacy, 
disturb the simplicity of nature, and no sensual ] Meas¬ 
uring, in the name of food, become a want or expecta¬ 
tion of his appetite. Any artificial appetite began, is 
the beginning of distemper, disease, and a general dis¬ 
turbance of natural proportion. Intemperance! the 
woes of intemperate drink! how dismal the story, w T hen 
it is told; how dreadful the picture, when we look 
upon it. From what do the father and mother recoil, 
with a greater and more total horror of feeling, than 
the possibility that their child is to be a drunkard? 
Little do they remember that he can be, even before he 
has so much as tasted the cup; and that they them¬ 
selves can make him so, virtually, without meaning it, 
even before he has gotten his language! Nine-tenths 
of the intemperate drinking begins, not in grief and 
destitution, as we so often hear, but in vicious feeding. 
Here the scale of order and simplicity is first broken, 
and then what shall a distempered or distemperate life 
run to, more certainly, than to what is intemperate? 
False feeding genders false appetite, and when the soul 
is burning, all through, in the fires of false appetite, 
what is that but a universal uneasiness ? and what will 
this uneasiness more naturally do, than betake itself to 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 277 

the pleasurable excitement of drink ? What is wanted 
is a sensation—the soul is aching for a sensation; for 
t is one of the miseries of food that the tasting pleas¬ 
ure is soon oyer and the cloj^ed body turns away in dis¬ 
gust ; one of the excellencies of drink, that the sensa¬ 
tion is a long one, and may be easily drawn out so as 
to cover whole hours of duration. Food, sleep, friends, 
the self-enjoyment of character—what an excellent and 
easy substitute it is for them all! Thus, for example, 
when a very young child, taken by the captivating 
flavor of some dainty or confectionery, has refused 
to restrain itself, and has kept on, as by a kind of spell, 
repeating the sensation again and again, till the organs, 
dried and cloyed by excess, refuse to give it longer, 
you will see that a wonderful uneasiness follows, ask¬ 
ing what sensation next? and really'there is nothing 
that can fill the vacant space, or quiet the uneasiness. 
One toy or another will be seized and thrown into the 
fire. The plays that before satisfied look insipid and 
do not please. The world goes ill because there is 
nothing good enough in it, and a general cry finishes 
the overdone pleasure of the day. And here you have 
in small, as in a single view, just that misery of distem¬ 
per and uneasiness which is wrought, by the bad feed¬ 
ing of childhood, and prepares the vice of intemper 
ance, even before it appears. 

It is only a larger and more comprehensive mischief 
of the wrong feeding of children, that it puts them 
under the body, teaches them to value bodily sensa¬ 
tions, makes them sensual every way, and sets them 
24 


278 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


lusting in every kind of excess. The vice of impurity 
is taught, how commonly, thus, at the mother’s table. 
The finer sentiments and wits of children are smoth¬ 
ered also and deadened, by this same animalizing pro¬ 
cess. They make a dull figure at school. Their feel¬ 
ing is coarse, their conscience weak, their passions low 
and violent. Their higher affinities, those which ally 
them to God and character and unseen worlds, appear 
to be closed up, and the lines of their faces, particu¬ 
larly about the mouth, give a low sensual expression, 
even when the upper-head is large and full. A certain 
degree of selfishness is likely to be somehow developed 
in children, for sin of every kind is selfish, but the 
lowest, meanest, and most utterly degraded type of 
selfishness, is the sensual; that which centers in the 
body, and makes every thing bend to bodily sensation. 
And yet the early feeding and growth of children 
tends, how often, to just this and nothing higher. Say¬ 
ing nothing of genius and great action, impossible to 
be developed in this manner out of the finest possible 
organization, what hope is there under such abuse of 
nature, that religion will there begin to loosen her 
noble aspirations, and claim her sonship with God? 
What place can the love of God find open, in a soul 
that is shut up under the bruitishness of sensuality ? 
What sensibility is left for Christ and God, when the 
body has become the total manhood ? 

And exactly this it will most certainly be, if first it 
becomes the total childhood. We have a way of say¬ 
ing, continually, that children are creatures of the 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 


279 


senses, and we please ourselves in making allowances 
for them in this manner, and raising expectations of 
them that suppose the likelihood of their, by-and-bye, 
coming out of their senses, into the higher ranges of 
thought and spiritual impulse. But we do not remem¬ 
ber, always, the immense distinction between being in 
the senses and being in the sensualities; between going 
after the eyes, and going after the stomach; between the 
almost divine curiosity of intelligence, exploring all 
objects, sounds, and colors, to get in the stock of its 
mental furniture, and the totally incurious hankering of 
appetite, for some finer, freer indulgence of the animal 
sensation. Little hope is there of a child, who is in the 
senses, after this latter fashion. This he will quite sel¬ 
dom or never outgrow; on the contrary, it will over¬ 
grow him, and subjugate all nobler impulse in him, by 
a kind of natural law; even as disease propagates more 
disease and not health. In this manner, a child can be 
fairly put under the body for life, by the time he is five 
years old. And just this, I verily believe, is often true. 
Kindness, it may be, has done it, but it is that kindness 
which is better called cruelty. Coarseness of feeling, 
lowness of impulse, gluttony, dissipation, drunkenness, 
adultery—all foul passions that kennel in a sensual 
soul, it has cherished as a foster-mother; not once imag¬ 
ining the fact, in the indiscreet feeding of the hapless 
creature trusted to its care. 

This, too, will be rendered yet more probable by 
reviewing, briefly, some of the methods by which a 


280 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


more judicious, and more properly Christian feeding 
will conduce toward a different and happier result. 

First of all, it will not be a permitted practice, to 
quiet the child in states of irritation, or stop it in cry¬ 
ing, or pacify it in fits of ill-nature, by dainties that 
please the taste. What is this but a schooling and 
drawing out of sensation, by making it the reward of 
just that which is most totally opposite to self-govern¬ 
ment ? It must be a very dull child that will not cry 
and fret a great deal, when it is so pleasantly rewarded. 
Trained, in this manner, to play ill-nature for sensation’s 
sake, it will go on rapidly, in the course of double attain¬ 
ment, and will be very soon perfected, in the double 
character of an ill-natured, morbid, sensualist, and a 
feigning cheat beside. By what method, or means, 
can the great themes of God and religion get hold of a 
soul, that has learned to be governed only by rewards 
of sensation, paid to affectations of grief and deliberate 
actings of ill-nature ? 

Simplicity also, as opposed to luxuries, condiments, 
and confections, is a condition of all right feeding for 
infancy and childhood, which ought to approve itself 
to the most ordinary measure of parental discretion. 
Of course I do not mean to say that the child is 
never to have his holiday feast—that would be 
to cut him off from another kind of benefit—I only 
insist that he is not to have a perpetual holiday, 
and be stimulated by continual flavors on his or¬ 
gans, till the beautiful simplicity of his appetite is 
gone and nothing pleases longer, but that which is in- 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 281 

tense enough to be rather poison than food. Coffee, for 
example—what can be worse for a child’s body, or his 
future character, than to be dosed every morning with 
his cup of coffee ? No matter if he cries for it, all the 
worse if he does; for it shows that he has been already 
taught to love it, and is so far taken away, prematurely, 
from the natural simplicity of his tastes. And how is 
the child going to be drawn by the beauty of God, and 
the sacred pleasures of God’s friendship, when thinking 
always of the dainties he has had, or is again to have, 
and counting it always the main blessing of existence, 
to have his body seasoned by the flavors of sensation ? 
Instead of praying, as possibly he may be taught, in 
words—“Feed me with food convenient for me”—he 
prays, in fact, from morning to night, with all diseased 
longings and hankerings, to be fed, in the exact contrary, 
with what will most increase his already overgrown 
sensuality. In a manner faithfully characteristic of his 
low, prudential morality, Paley advises that all chil¬ 
dren and young person should live simply, because they 
are now susceptible enough to relish simple things; in 
order that, as their tastes grow duller with advancing 
age, they may allow themselves a freer indulgence in 
the stimulations of appetite, and may so maintain the 
feeding pleasures to the last. Counsel not to be ques¬ 
tioned, even if these pleasures were the chief end of life 
itself. We are only disappointed and vexed by the 
lowness of it, when we recall, what is the real and true 
penalty of youthful indulgence, that it takes away the 
possible relish of truth, duty, and religion, and makes 
24 * 


282 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


the soul forever inaccessible to these noblest powers of 
character and blessedness. 

In a wise, physical nurture, it is a matter of great 
import also to regulate the times of feeding. For this 
induces the sense of order, which is closely allied to a 
habit of self-government. If the nursing child is simply 
stuffed to its last limit, at any and all hours, then it is 
put in the way, not of intelligent feeding, which is in¬ 
terspaced by rest, but of always being filled to its limit. 
The feeding must, of course, be as much more frequent 
in infancy as the demands of a more rapid consumption 
require, but there should be times, and a degree of order 
established, as soon as possible; otherwise the stuffing 
method will go on into childhood, and boyhood, and by 
that time the bodily habit is in total disorder, carrying 
the tempers and general character with it. The break¬ 
fast before breakfast, and the dinner before dinner, and 
the casual snatching and feeding at all hours between, 
bring the child to the table with a scowl upon his face, 
and a nervous, morbid look of disgust, which declare, 
as plainly as possible, that there is nothing good enough 
prepared for him; and, quite as plainly, that he is a 
poor, misgoverned and spoiled child. He is overtaken 
by all the woes of sensuality, and yet has gotten almost 
none of its pleasures; for he is always kept, by his 
irregular, ungoverned feeding, so close up to the line of 
possible appetite, that peevishness and ill-nature are the 
spice of all his sensations, and his body and soul are about 
equally distempered by the morbid irritations and dys¬ 
peptic woes that have come upon them. What a prep- 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 


283 


aration is this for the calm, sweet, thoughtful, motives 
of religion, and the gentle whispers of God’s truth in 
the heart! 

It should also be understood in the religious training 
of children, how great mischiefs are likely to follow, 
when much is made of the pleasures of the table. If 
the feeding is the great circumstance of the house and 
the day, if the discourse turns always on the peculiar 
relish of this, or the wonderful delicacy of that, and the 
main stress of life in general on the bliss of good living, 
it will not much avail, that the parents have a certain 
wish to see their children grow up in religion. A 
stranger falling into such a family, will be amazed to 
find how pervasive and spirit-like this most unetherial, 
undiffusive kind of bliss may be. The smack of appe¬ 
tite will seem to be in the atmosphere of the house. It 
will be as if the gastric nerve of the family were be¬ 
come the whole brain. A certain coarseness of feeling 
and character will appear in every thing. The grain 
will be coarse, both of body and soul; and the general 
expression of manners, faces, and voices, will be such 
as indicates a reduction of grade, in all the finer im¬ 
pulses of society, intelligence, and duty. The family 
affections themselves will seem to have fallen back, to 
make room for the valued bliss of the appetites. No 
matter how much of prayer and regular church-going 
there may be in such a family, the child brought up in 
it has a most sad fortune to bear, in the savoring habit 
to which it trains him. Nor is it only in some high 
conditioned family, where wealth is steeping itself in 


284 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


luxury, that this kind of woe is put upon children. It 
quite as often begins at the coarse, low table of the sen¬ 
sually minded poor. These are even most likely of all 
to live, and teach their children to live, for what they 
may eat. The humble Christian mother, it may be, 
having no luxuries of dress and show to give her chil¬ 
dren, makes it a great point to have them enjoy the 
feeding of their bodies; and so, instead of fining them 
to a nobler pleasure in the virtues of frugality, order, 
gentle society, and good action, she graduates them into 
just that coarsest sensuality which is the bane of all 
character, for this life and the next. 

It is a much greater point, in this connection, than is 
commonly supposed, that children should be trained to 
good manners in their eating. Good manners are a 
kind of self-government which operates continually to 
keep the body under, and hold the sensualizing ten¬ 
dency of food in check. Animals have no manners, 
and the higher gift of manners is allowed to man, to 
keep him from the coarseness and lowness to which his 
animal nature would otherwise run. In this view, good 
manners are even a sort of first-stage religion, for the 
reduction of the body. If the child is practiced care¬ 
fully, at his food, in deferring to superiors and seniors; 
in the restraint of haste, or greediness; in the proprie¬ 
ties of positions, and the handsome uses of tools; in 
the limitation of his feeding by his wants, and a good- 
natured submission to restriction when restriction is 
needed for his good; he will not grow sensual in that 
manner, but his i^iind will be all the while getting sov- 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 285 

ereignty over the body. Good breeding and civility are, 
in this view, indispensable. The Christian training of chil¬ 
dren, without any care of their manners in these respects, 
is only the training, in fact, of barbarians and savages, 
in the houses of such as call themselves Christian people. 

There is great importance also, for a similar reason, 
in the observance of a Christian blessing, or giving of 
thanks at the table. The mere form, taken only as a con¬ 
stantly recurring acknowledgment of God and the obliga¬ 
tions of gratitude, laid on the family by his goodness, is a 
matter of inestimable value. The bare recollection of a 
higher nature and the higher meaning of life, coupled uni¬ 
formly thus with the order of the table, qualifies the lower 
sensations, and raises them to a kind of spiritual dignity. 
It is even a pitiful figure, in this view, which the great 
Franklin makes, when, with so little show of philoso¬ 
phy, saying nothing of Christian reverence, he recites, 
in a manner of evident pleasure, the wit of his boy¬ 
hood : asking his father, at the packing of his barrel of 
meat, why he did not say grace over the whole barrel 
at once, and save the necessity of so many repetitions ? 
These repetitions are the very things most wanted. 
They compose the liturgy of the table, and have their 
value, not in the quantities of meat they season, but in 
the seasoning of the partakers themselves, by so many 
reiterations of their, at least, formal homage and grati¬ 
tude. At the same time there should be much care 
taken to make these blessings of the table more than a 
form; to connect a real and felt meaning with them, 
and make them the expression of a living and true 


286 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


gratitude in all present. Children can be so trained, in 
this matter, as even to miss the flavor of their meat, 
when no blessing is upon it. What then can be ex¬ 
pected, in a Christian family, when the children are put 
to their food with no such recognition of God and 
have their faces turned downward always upon it, even 
as if they were animals ? Doubtless the blessing may, 
too often, be a mere form, but it is a form which, apart 
from any conscious glow of sentiment, no Christian 
family can afford to lose. 

Much also may be done for children, by associating 
subjects, and sentiments, and plans of practical charity, 
with the blessings and pleasures of the table. To do 
this requires no very ingenious methods, or deeply 
studied plans. It will be done almost, of course, if the 
parents themselves are, at all, given to such things; 
for, in such a case, they can hardly fail to speak of the 
children of the poor, and the bitter pains and pinings 
of their unsatisfied hunger. If the appetites of chil¬ 
dren are eager and easily turned to a habit of sensu¬ 
ality, their sympathies also are quick, and their compas¬ 
sions wonderfully tender. Let these last be called into 
play, and kept in play, as they may be always by a 
few simple words of charity, and proposed acts of 
bounty to the children of want, and the former, the 
appetites, will become incentives even habitually, to 
what is noblest in feeling and remotest from a properly 
sensual character. The body itself becomes the inter¬ 
preter, in such a case, of want, and offers itself duti¬ 
fully to mercy, to be used as its organ. 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 287 

Such are a few of the suggestions that require to be 
noted and observed, in the right feeding of children. 
Others will occur to you daily, as your work goes on, 
if only you are really awake to the transcendent im¬ 
portance of the subject. Let it never be assumed, for 
one moment, that you are now doing nothing and can 
be doing nothing for your children, because you are 
only feeding their bodies. A very considerable part of 
your parental charge lies just here; in giving your chil¬ 
dren such a nurture in the body, as makes them superior 
to the body; subordinates the passions, and evens the tem¬ 
pers of the body ; prepares them to a state of robust and 
massive healthiness; gives them clearer heads, and nobler 
sentiments of truth; preparing them, in that manner, to 
be good scholars, to have their affectional nature opened 
wide by a general love, to have their perceptive feeling 
quickened to all highest forms of beauty and good, 
and so to have them ready, more and more ready, for a 
state of eternally unsealed affinity with God. There is 
not any thing, in the highest ranges of their spiritual 
and religious nature, that will not be somehow affected, 
and powerfully too, by the feeding of their bodies. 
Even their conscience itself, which is God’s own organ 
or throne, so to speak, in their nature—the most self- 
asserting and, as we should say, most indestructible 
of all their powers—can be made to ring out clear and 
true, like a bell in the night, or it can be stifled and 
choked, so as scarcely to be audible—all by the mere 
feeding of the body. So there is a feeding that makes 
a manly life, and a feeding that makes a mean, weak, 


288 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


ignoble life. So there is a feeding which makes room 
for God, and a feeding that leaves him no vacant space 
or chamber to fill. The question here is not, exactly, 
what converting power is exerted or not exerted, what 
Christian truth impressed or not impressed, but it is 
what kind of metal, in fact, the future man is to be 
made of; for all that is entered, thus early, into the 
feeding habit of the body, is about as really composite 
and substantial as that which is prepared in the inborn 
properties of nature itself. This feeding nurture, if we 
take the real sense of it, is to grow in good or bad 
affinities and possibilities; to grow a body under the 
soul, or over it; to form a good or bad staple, in the 
substance of the man, which is going to remain un¬ 
changed, by all his future changes and transformations, 
about as certainly as his face, or gait, and in much the 
same degree. 

To complete this view of the bodily nurture and 
keeping, something ought also to be said of personal 
neatness, and also of dress, in both of which the bodily 
habit is concerned, though in a more external and less 
decisive way. 

As regards the matter of personal neatness, I will 
only suggest the very close relationship of association 
between it, as a habit, and the spiritual habit of the 
soul in religion. In this holy endeavor of grace, or 
religion, the soul aspires to be clean. Conscious of 
great defilement in sin, it hears a call to come and be 
made white, even as the snow. It begins with the 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 289 

prayer—“ Create in me a clean heart, O God,” and the 
longing after purity, and a clean consciousness before 
Him, draws it on. To be washed, purified, made 
clean—under these, and such like terms of aspiration, 
it is exercised, in all the keeping of the life, that it 
may incur no spot or stain, and be effectually purged 
from all most subtle defilements. In this view, bodily 
neatness, or the cleanly keeping of the person, is a kind 
of outward religion going before, preparing tastes, 
images, sensibilities, habits that make the soul more 
akin to religion, readier to feel the obligation, and 
labor in the purifying endeavor. And, in this view, 
the mother, the poor Christian mother, who has noth¬ 
ing of this world’s good, as we commonly speak, to put 
upon her children, has yet one of the best goods of all, 
which she may, without fail, bestow, viz: a cleanly 
habit. She gives them a great mark of honor, and seta 
them in a way of great hope and preferment, as regards 
all highest character, when she trains them to a felt 
necessity of neatness and order. On the other hand, 
if she allows them to grow up in a filthy and loose 
habit, crowding all bounty upon them, and breathing 
out her soul beside, in prayer and fasting on their ac¬ 
count, it will be wonderful if they have much sensi¬ 
bility to the defilements of the soul, or come to God in 
any determinate longings after purity. Nay, it will be 
wonderful if the dirt upon their persons and clothing 
is not found upon their conscience also, and if they do 
not go on to live the disorder in their souls, which has 
Vaen the untidy element of their bodies. 

25 


290 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


There is also this very peculiar excellence in neat¬ 
ness, that it is not ambitious, not for show, but more for 
what it is in itself—an honest kind of benefit, or good, 
that brings along no bad or false motive with it. 
Hence there is no temptation in the practice. Honor 
and ornament and grace of poverty, as it often is, it is 
only the more truly such, that it simply fulfills and per¬ 
petuates a fixed necessity, looking after no reward, save 
what it is to itself. Formed to such a habit, and 
scarcely conscious of it, the children grow into a kind 
of pure simplicity in good, which is itself one of the 
finest symbols and surest outward preparations of the 
religious life and character. 

The subject of dress, taken as related to religious 
character in youth, is one of transcendent importance, 
but as I am treating mostly of what is to be done for 
children, in the few first years of their training, I shall 
dismiss the subject with only a few suggestions, such as 
my particular purpose appears to require. 

There is this very singular and striking contrast be¬ 
tween animals and men, that they are born dressed, 
and these to be dressed; while yet the fact of a dress 
is equally necessary to both. The object of the dis¬ 
tinction appears to be, to allow, in the latter case, a 
certain liberty of form and appearance, even as there is 
given a grand central liberty of life and character 
within. It allows us to choose what shall be added to 
finish out our form, or appearing; and it is a singular 
fact, in this connection, that we always take our dress 
to be, in some sense, ourselves; just as if it grew out 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 


291 


of our bodily substance; so that we feel ourselves or¬ 
dinarily limited and hampered, in behavior and man¬ 
ners, in thought and feeling, and fancy, by the dress we 
have on. The consciousness of being badly, or half 
absurdly dressed, makes us awkward. We can not sit 
down to write in a sordid and tattered dress—thought 
can not sufficiently respect itself, the feeling nature and 
the taste and the fancy can not be in trim in such a 
guise. As a king would not like to appear in the 
dress of a convict, so they ask a dress that more respects 
their quality. There is a fearfully powerful reaction, 
thus, in dress, upon what is inmost and deepest in char¬ 
acter. And so much is there in this fact, that every 
Christian parent should be fully alive to it, even from 
the first; understanding that the child is going to en¬ 
large his consciousness, so as, in a sense, to take in his 
dress and be configured to it—inverting the common 
order of speech on the subject, when we talk of cut¬ 
ting the dress to the child; for it is equally true, in a 
different sense, that the child will be cut to his dress. 

Hence the dreadful mischief done to a child, by what 
may be called the dolling of it; that is, by dressing, 
or over-dressing it, just to please, or amuse, or, what is 
really more true, to tickle a certain weak and foolish 
pride in the parents. What meantime has become of 
that most tender and godly concern, which belongs to 
the Christian charge put upon them, in the gift of this 
same child ? It takes whole months, how often, to get 
the child’s looks and dress into such trim that it can be 
offered by them for baptism, making the desired im 


292 


PHYSICAL NURTURE 


pression; in which it turns out that the chief object, 
to them, of baptism, is the exhibition of the doll they 
have been dressing; not to get the seal and sacrament 
of God’s mercy upon it, as a creature in the heritage 
of their own corrupted life. 

And then, afterwards, the dressing goes on still, in 
faithful keeping with its sad beginning. In a few days 
this same child appears, marching the streets, in the 
ligure of a little gentleman with a cane; or if it be a 
daughter, hung with necklaces and chains, and set off 
with as much of finery as can well be supported—visi¬ 
bly conscious, in either case, of the fine show being 
made; even as the foolish parents, it might fitly despise, 
were just now admiring their doll at home, and prais¬ 
ing to itself the pretty figure it made ! 

Is this now the dress of a Christian child ? is this 
such a dress as a properly Christian nurture prescribes ? 
What is this child training for, but simply to be a fop, 
or fashionist, or fool ? This taste for show, and finery, 
and flattery—what is it but the beginning of all irrelig- 
ion ? and what will the after life be, but the continu¬ 
ance of this beginning ? 

Just contrary to this, whoever will bring up a child 
for God, must put him, at the very first, into God’s 
modes and measures. The real question of dress, is 
what shall be put upon this child, to make it feel 
most like a Christian—what will give him the finest 
feeling with the least of show and vanity ? What will 
leave him in a state most natural, and simple, and far¬ 
thest from affectation ? What will be most like to the 


TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 293 

putting on of Christ himself, his righteousness, beauty, 
truth, meekness, and dignity? Dress your child for 
Christ, if you will have him a Christian; bring every 
thing, in the training, even of his body, to this one 
final aim, and it will be strange, if the Christian body 
you give him does not contain a Christian soul. 

25 * 


IV. 

THE TREATMENT THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 

“ Fathers provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.” 
— Colossians , iii. 21. 

Discouraged, the apostle means, in good; that is, in 
worthy purposes and pious endeavors. Nothing will 
more certainly put a child in a discouraged feeling, than 
to be angered by a parent’s ill-nature and abuse. The 
anger is, most certainly, far enough from being itself a 
state of discouragement; but anger is a passion that can 
not hold long and the after state into which it subsides, 
in the case of inferiors and dependants, is commonly a 
giving up to the bad, a passionless and low desperation, 
that is equivalent to a general surrender of all high 
aims and aspirations. 

In this view, it would not be altogether amiss, and 
certainly no improper use of the apostle’s words, if I 
were to offer under them a lecture to parents, on the 
provoking ways of treatment and government. But I 
have chosen them for a different purpose, and one that 
is more inclusive, viz: to introduce and give sanction 
to a discourse on— 

The discouragement of piety in children; the ways in 
which it is discouraged , and the great care necessary to avoid 
a mistake so injurious. 


THE TREATMENT. 


295 


I speak here, of course, to parents who really desire 
the spiritual welfare of their children. Nothing is far¬ 
ther off from their design, than to push their children 
away from Christ into a state of alienated and discour¬ 
aged feeling. And yet they do it, very often, by faults 
of management not suspected, and never afterwards dis¬ 
covered ; unless, possibly, after the injury is done, when 
it can no longer be repaired. 

It becomes, in this view, a very serious and prac¬ 
tically important question, how, or by what methods, 
Christian parents, unawares to themselves and contrary 
to their really good intentions, discourage piety in their 
children? Let us see if we can partially answer the 
question. 

We begin, then, where the apostle begins with his 
remonstrance. His language is particularly addressed 
to fathers; for he seems to have in view the case of 
children, who are in the more advanced stages of child¬ 
hood, or in what we call the period of youth. And 
yet the language is equally applicable to the case of 
mothers and very little children. It might not be 
wholly amiss for a half-grown lad, or youth, who has 
violated his father’s feelings, by some really base act of 
crime, or disobedience, to see, by the smoke of his indig¬ 
nant passion, how deeply his right sensibility is revolted. 
That will never discourage him in any thing good. 
It might even rouse his moral nature, when nothing 
less violent would suffice. The father will really dis¬ 
courage good in his son, only when he stings him with 
a sense of injustice, and keeps him in a wounded feel- 


296 


THE TREATMENT 


ing, by bis own ungoverned, groundless passion. But 
in tbe case of the mother, dealing with her very young 
child, there is no place even for so much as a feeling of 
impatience. No crisis occurs that she has any right to 
carry by a storm. And yet there are many mothers 
who breed a climate of storms for their children to grow 
up in, even from the first. They make an element of 
pettishness and passion, and call it Christian nurture to 
maintain a kind of quarrel with their children, from 
infancy upward. We do not commonly conceive that 
the children are discouraged, thus, in the matter of 
piety; but the real fact is, that their better, higher nature, 
quite worn down by such treatment, sinks at last into 
a kind of atrophy, which is the essence of all discour¬ 
agement. By the time they are passed through this 
first chapter of torment, their faces even have begun 
to take on a forlorn expression, as if their well-abused 
feeling had been quite choked off from every thing 
hopeful or good. Nothing is more beautiful than the 
God-ward affinities, and glad impulses to good, in a 
childish soul; but when it has once been kiln-dried in 
this hot furnace of motherly or fatherly passion, there 
is no more any putting forth after the divine. A kind 
of indifference, or sullen prejudice, sets off the heart 
from God, and the gentle affinities close up under the 
stupor of so great early abuse and discouragement. 

Children are also discouraged and hardened to good 
by too much of prohibition. There is a monotony of 
continuous, ever sounding, prohibition, which is really 
awful. It does not stop with ten commandments, like 


THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 297 

the word of Sinai, but it keeps the thunder up, from 
day to day, saying always thou shalt not do this, nor 
this, nor this, till, in fact, there is really nothing left to 
be done. The whole enjoyment, use, benefit, of life is 
quite used up by the prohibitions. The child lives 
under a tilt-hammer of commandment, beaten to the 
ground as fast as he attempts to rise. All command¬ 
ments, of course, in such a strain of injunction, come to 
sound very much alike, and one appears to be about as 
important as another. And the result is that, as they 
are all in the same emphasis, and are all equally annoy¬ 
ing, the child teams to hate them all alike, and puts 
them all away. He could not think of heartily accept¬ 
ing them all, and it would even be a kind of irrever¬ 
ence to make a selection. Nothing so fatally worries a 
child, as this faulfc of over-commandment. The study 
should be rather to forbid as few things as possible, and 
then to soundly enforce what is forbidden. Such kind 
of prohibitions the child will even like, and will be all 
the happier, that he has something good to observe. 
But nothing can be more impotent, in the way of au¬ 
thority, than the din of a continual prohibition. Even 
the commandments of God will, in such a case, be 
robbed of all just authority, by the custom of a gen¬ 
eral weariness and distaste; in which all highest man¬ 
dates are leveled to equality with the pettiest and 
most useless restraints. 

Again, it is a great discouragement to piety in chil¬ 
dren, when they are governed in a hard, unfeeling, way 
or in a manner of force and overbearing absolutism. 


298 


THE TREATMENT 


Any thing which puts the child aloof from the parent, 
or takes away the confidence of love and sympathy, 
will as certainly be a wall to shnt him away from God. 
If his Christian father is felt only as a tyrant, he will 
seem to have a tyrant in God’s name to bear; and that 
will be enough to create a sullen prejudice against all 
sacred things. Nor is the case at all better when the 
child is cowed under fear of such- a parent, and reduced 
to a feeling of dread or abject submission. There is a 
beautiful courage in children as respects approach to 
God, when God is not presented as a bugbear; and this 
natural state of courage, is just that which makes the 
time of childhood so ingenuously open to religion. But 
if their courage, even toward their father, is already 
broken down into fear and servile submission, they will 
only think of God with as much greater fear, and shrink 
from all the claims of piety with a kind of abject recoil, 
as from a thing forbidden. No gentleness even of 
Christ will suffice, in such a case, to win, or reassure the 
broken courage of the soul. I recall a family in which 
the father, known as a man of condition and of no 
little repute for his Christian good works, brought up a 
large family of boys to be ruled at a distance. He 
addressed them in a kind of imperious, unfeeling way; 
not with any violence of manner, but with a stern faced 
grin that seemed to say, “it is well that you fear me.” 
And fear him they most certainly did—fear was the 
element in which they grew. And the result was that 
having no self-respect, and living under a law of mere 
suppression, they fell into base immoralities from their 


THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 299 

childhood, and were never afterwards known, even one 
of them, to have so much as a thought of piety. 

Another and even more common way of discouraging 
children in matters of piety is by an over-exacting man¬ 
ner, or by an extreme difficulty of being pleased. Chil¬ 
dren love approbation, and are specially disappointed, 
when they fail of it in their meritorious endeavors. Their 
chagrin is never more complete, in fact, than when, having 
set themselves to any purpose of well-doing, they are still 
repulsed by a manner of fault-finding at the end, and 
blamed on account of some trivial defect which they did 
not know, and would really have tried to avoid. Some 
parents appear to think it a matter of true faithfulness, 
that they be not too easily pleased, lest their children 
should take up loose impressions of the strictness of duty. 
They do not consider how they would fare themselves, 
if God were to make a point of treating them in the 
same manner. His manner with them is exactly oppo¬ 
site. He perceives that he will only repel them, by 
making it a matter of difficulty to please him, and that 
he could never draw them on, if he did not yield them 
his smile under great faults and shortcomings, and did 
not give them the testimony that they please him, when 
they are a great way off from his own scale of perfec¬ 
tion. In all which we may readily see how great dis¬ 
couragement is put upon children, in all their good 
attempts, when their parents will not allow themselves 
to be pleased with any thing they do. Possibly they 
are withheld by scruples of orthodoxy. If so, the mis¬ 
chief is only the greater. What can win a child to the 


800 


THE TREATMENT 


attempt to please God, when his parents dare not suffer 
so much as a thought of the possibility in him, and, 
for the same reason, dare not so much as approve him 
themselves. Such kind of orthodoxy can not be too 
soon forsaken, or too earnestly repented of. 

Closely akin to this, is the fault of holding displeas¬ 
ure too long, and yielding it with too great difhculty. 
It is right that children, doing wrong, should encounter 
some kind of treatment that indicates displeasure. But 
the displeasure should not take the manner of a grudge, 
and hold on after the wrong is visibly felt and re¬ 
pented of. On the contrary, there should even be a 
hastening toward the child, in glad recognitions and 
cordial greetings, when the tokens only of relenting 
begin to appear; even as the prodigal’s father is repre¬ 
sented, in the parable, as discovering him, in his return, 
when he is yet a great way off, and advancing to meet 
and embrace him. By this tender figure God is shown 
us, and the holy generosity of his fatherhood is repre¬ 
sented. "We see that he is only the more ready to be 
pleased, because of his magnanimity; holding no re¬ 
sentments, putting off the feeling of offense at the ear¬ 
liest moment, and the cheapest possible rate. Nay, He 
will even take our good by anticipation; accepting us 
for what we ask, before he can accept us for what we 
are, Well is it for those parents who think it incum¬ 
bent on them, to hold their displeasure till the culprit 
is sufficiently scathed by it, if they do not hold it just 
a little too long; turning, thus, even his repentance into 
a sullen aversion, and setting it in his feeling, that there 


THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY-. SOI 

is tlie same heavy tariff of displeasure still to be paid, 
•when be would forsake bis sins and turn bimself to 
God. When will it be learned that penance is no fit 
beginning of piety ? 

And here let me speak of the very great danger, 
after a time of discipline, that the parent may bold bis 
displeasure too long; as be certainly will, if there is 
any ugly feeling, or wicked, natural resentment in him. 
Thus Jean Paul beautifully says :—“ A punishment is 
scarcely of such importance to a child as the succeeding 
quarter of an hour, and the transition to forgiveness. 
After the storm, the seed finds the soil warm and soft¬ 
ened ; the terror and hatred of the punishment are now 
past, which before resisted and struggled against the 
word, and gentle instruction finds its way, and brings 
healing with it, as honey assuages the sting of bees, and 
oil the pain of a wound. In this hour we can say 
much, if we use the utmost gentleness of voice, and by 
the manifestation of our own pain, soothe that of the 
child. But every continuance of wintry anger is pois¬ 
onous. Mothers easily fall into this prolongation of 
punishment. This continuance of anger; this would-be 
punishment of pretending a diminution of love, either 
fails to be comprehended by the child, because he is 
wholly immersed in the present and so misses its effect, 
or else he becomes satisfied with a deprivation of the 
signs of love, and learns to do without it; or else he 
is embittered by the continuance of punishment for a 
sin which he has already buried. Through this pro¬ 
longation of harshness, we lose that beautiful and touch- 
26 


302 


THE TREATMENT 


ing transition into forgiveness, which, by coming slowly 
and after a long period, only loses its power.”* 

Hasty and false accusations again are a great discour¬ 
agement to piety in children. Their good feeling, or 
intention, appears to be rated low by their parents, when 
they are put under the ban of dishonor, by false and 
groundless imputations; and they are very likely, as 
the next thing, to show that they are no better than 
they were taken to be. On this account, a wise parent 
will be religiously careful of all volunteer and random 
charges of blame, lest he may discourage fatally all 
pious or ingenuous aspirations by them; for to batter 
self-respect, or insult the sense of character, thus gratuit¬ 
ously, is the surest way possible to break every natural 
charm of virtue and religion. The effect is scarcely 
better where acknowledged faults are exaggerated, and 
set off in colors of derision. It will do for a parent to 
be just, severely just; for, by that means, he will best 
impress the sacred severity of principle. God is just in 
all his charges and reproofs; but there is no manner of 
excess or spirit of exaggeration in them. And exactly 
this it is which makes his kindness so beautiful, so in¬ 
spiring to our courage, so attractive to our love. But 
harsh justice, exaggerated justice, is injustice. When a 
child, therefore, is persecuted by railing words, cauter¬ 
ized by satire, blamed without reason Or measure for 
faults not easily corrected, the severity is really unprin¬ 
cipled as well as unfriendly, and is only the more 
dreadfully mischievous, that it takes on airs of piety, 


* Levana iii. § 65. 



THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 303 

and bears the Christian name. How can he be drawn 
by that which has no grace of allowance, and yields no 
sympathy to the struggles of his infirmity ? How many 
poor children are beaten out of all their natural affini¬ 
ties for good, by just this kind of cruelty I They had 
parents who, in fault of the better evidences of love and 
patience, thought to make up the deficit in being at 
least severe enough to be Christian; which, though it 
was an easy grace for them—the only grace at their 
command—was, alas! fearfully hard on the subjects. 

We bring into view a different class of discouraging 
causes, when we speak of that anxiousness, or always 
miserable concern, for children, by which some parents 
keep them in a continual torment of suppression. We 
have really no right to allow a properly anxious feeling 
any where. Anxiety is a word of unbelief, or unrea¬ 
soning dread. Full faith in God puts it at rest; any 
solid conviction of necessity and right is chloroform to 
the pain of it. And we have the less right to be 
anxious, that it is a feeling which destroys the comfort 
of others whenever and wheresoever it appears. Only 
to be in a room with an anxious person, though a stran¬ 
ger, is enough to make one positively unhappy; for the 
manner, the nervous unsteadiness, and worry, and shift, 
are so irresistibly expressive, that no effort of silence, or 
suppression, is able to conceal the torment. To go a 
journey thus with an anxious person, is about the worst 
kind of pilgrimage. What then is the woe put upon 
a hapless little one or child, who is shut up day by day 
and year by year, to the always fearing look and depre- 


304 


THE TREATMENT 


eating whine, the questioning, protesting, super-caution¬ 
ary keeping of a nervously anxious mother. If the 
child catches the infection himself, he will never come 
to any thing; never dare any great purpose that be¬ 
longs to a man, or a Christian. And if he does not 
catch it, which is more probable, then he will pitch him¬ 
self into a campaign of will and passion with all that 
kind of control, a good deal less rational, probably, 
than the control itself. Simply to enter the house will 
raise a breeze in his feeling, and he will be worried and 
fretted, till he has somehow made his escape. Nothing 
is more opposite to the hopeful and free spirit of child¬ 
hood, and nothing will so dreadfully overcast the sky 
of childhood, as the sad kind of weather it is always 
making. It worries the child in every putting forth 
and play, lest he should somehow be hurt; takes him 
away, or would, from every contact with the great 
world’s occasions, that would give fit schooling to his 
manhood. And then, since the child will most cer¬ 
tainly learn, at last, how little reason there was in the 
eternal distress of so many fears and imaginations 
of harm, he is sure to be issued finally, in a feeling 
of confirmed disrespect, which is the end of all good 
influence or advice. And then it will be so much the 
worse, if the anxiety whose bagpipe melody has been 
the torment of his early days, has shown itself in the 
same unregulated way in matters of religion. Noth¬ 
ing will set a child farther off from religion, or make 
him more utterly incapable of sympathy with it, than 
to have had it put upon him in a whining and misgiv- 


THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 305 

ing way, in all his moods and occasions. No! there 
must be a certain courage in maternity and the religion 
of it. The child must be wisely trusted to danger, and 
shown how to conquer it. A pleasure must be taken 
in giving him a certain range of adventure; and he 
must see that his courage and capacity are confided in. 
And then it must be seen, in the same way, that his 
truth, fidelity, piety, are as much expected as his man¬ 
hood. In a certain good sense, the mother may be 
anxious for him, burdened in her prayers in his be¬ 
half, but she must take on hope and confidence nev¬ 
ertheless, and show that courage in him, as regards all 
good endeavor, is met and supported by courage in 
herself. 

Again, it will be found that piety is very commonly 
discouraged in children, by giving them tests of charac¬ 
ter that are inappropriate to their age. There is an 
immense cruelty put upon children here, by parents 
who have really no design but simply to be faithful. 
Their child, for example, loses his temper in some mat¬ 
ter in which he is crossed ; and the conclusion is forth¬ 
with sprung upon him that he has a bad heart, and is 
certainly no Christian child. Whereupon he ceases to 
pray; or, if he is put to it as a form, does it with an 
averted and reluctant feeling, as if the wrong were con¬ 
clusive against his prayers. It is only necessary to ask 
how the father, how the mother would themselves fare, 
tested by the same rule? If irritation, passion, any 
loss of temper, is conclusive against the little being 
who has scarcely began to be practiced in self-govern- 
26* 


306 


THE TREATMENT 


ment, how is it with them who ought by this time to be 
immovably fixed in their serenity ? So if the child has 
played, or shown some eagerness for play on Sunday, 
has not the father, or the mother, who indeed has out¬ 
grown all such care for play, been delving still, even in 
the church worship itself, and at the table of commun¬ 
ion, in schemes, and projects, and works, that thrust 
out, for the time, even these most sacred things from 
any d le place in their attention. If sometimes a mere 
child k% carried away by exuberant life and playfulness, 
is that worse than to be cankered by the love of gain, 
or by the severe and sober sins of a grasping, eager, 
worldly manhood ? The sins of children are ingenuous 
and open, and on just that account are to be less 
severely judged. The sins of manhood are sins of grav¬ 
ity, prudence, self-seeking, always contriving to wear 
some plausible aspect of sobriety and dignity; but they 
ave not any the more consistent with piety on that ac¬ 
count. We do not judge that any one is of course with¬ 
out piety, dr is no Christian, because he has faults, or 
failings, or even because he is overtaken by sins; why 
then should a child be condemned, as having no just 
evidence of piety, just because he is only a little less 
under the power of evil than his Christian father and 
mother? God, I am certain, judges children’s faults in 
no such manner, and therefore it is never to be assumed 
by us that they are without piety, because they falter 
in some things. If they only falter, seeming still to 
love what is good, and struggle ingenuously after it, 
there is just as good reason to hope that their hearts 


THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 307 

have been touched by the Spirit of God, as there is that 
the hearts of older persons have been, when they are 
groping always in the seventh chapter of the Romans, 
having a mind to serve God, but always failing in the 
service. The child must be judged or tested in the 
same general way as the adult. If he is wholly per¬ 
verse, has no spirit of duty, turns away from all relig¬ 
ious things, it will not discourage any thing good in 
him to tell him that he is without piety; but if he 
loves religious things, wants to be in them, tries after a 
good and obedient life, he is to be shown how tenderly 
God regards him, how ready he is to forgive him; and 
when he stumbles or falls, how kindly he will raise him 
up, how graciously help him to stand. Nor does it 
make any difference that no time is remembered, when 
he seemed to be brought unto God, by a great change 
of experience, such as adult persons are often the sub¬ 
jects of. He ought not to be the subject *of any such 
change; and if he is properly trained, will not be. As 
regards the testing of his condition or character, noth¬ 
ing at all depends on that. It will even be a good sign 
for him that he has always seemed to love Christ; and 
it will be no proper evidence to the contrary, that he 
sometimes falters. Children are very ingenuous, and 
they may even show some disinclination, for a time, to 
all religious duties, without creating any such evidence. 
Adults often suffer such disinclination, when they do 
not allow it to appear. The sum of all I would say 
here is, let children be judged as children, and let them 
not be cruelly discouraged in all thoughts of love to 


308 


THE TREATMENT 


God, because they falter, as older people do; only in a 
different manner. 

I must also speak of another and more general mode 
of discouragement, in what may be called the bolding 
back, or holding aloof system, by which children are 
denied an early recognition of their membership in the 
church, and an admission to the Lord’s table. I have 
spoken of this membership already, in another place, 
and shall also speak, hereafter, of the supper in its more 
positive uses. What I now refer to, more especially, 
is the negatively bad or discouraging effect thrown 
upon their piety, by these methods of detention, or ex¬ 
clusion. The child giving evidence, however beauti¬ 
ful, of his piety, is still kept back from the fellowship 
and table of Christ, for the simple defect of years. As 
if years were one of the Scripture evidences of grace. 
Sometimes the difficulty is that he can speak of no ex¬ 
perience, or change, such as we call conversion; and 
sometimes, if he can, that he is yet too young to be 
confided in. And so it turns out, after all that is said 
of the membership initiated in baptism, that nothing is 
practically made of it, or allowed to be made of it. The 
membership it creates is only a disjunctive conjunction; 
words for a show, answered by no conditions or con¬ 
sequences of fact. The poor child still is virtually 
counted or assumed to be an alien, required to be con¬ 
verted in just the same fashion as all heathens are, and 
to show the fact by the same kind of evidences. The 
little, saintly daughter, for example, of a venerable 
Presbyterian minister, aching for a place at the Lord’s 


THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 


309 


table, goes to ber father, after being several times post¬ 
poned by him and by the session, asking—“father, 
when shall I be old enough to be a Christian ?” He 
and his session, alas! did not believe that of such is 
the kingdom of heaven. Had the dear child gone to 
Jesus, she would most certainly have gotten a different 
answer. True, the religious experience of children is 
of course small—only not as small, or unreliable, by 
any means, as the experience commonly is of an adult 
convert only a few weeks old. Besides, what is the use 
of a fold, if the lambs are to be kept outside till it is 
seen whether they can stand the weather ? 

The chilling, desolating effect of this very unnatural 
and cruel practice, will be understood without diffi¬ 
culty. No plan could be devised for the discourage¬ 
ment of piety in children, that would be more certain 
of its object. They are only mocked and tantalized by 
their baptism itself. They are thrust away and kept 
aloof from the communion of Christ, for reasons that 
make it impossible for them to be reliably Christian. 
And so their courage is broken down, and all their 
religious longings are crippled, just when they most 
want grace and sympathy to draw them on. 

The remedy is plain. In the first place, there ought 
to be some exercise or service in every church, to which 
the baptized children may be called, in common with 
the adult members, there to be recognized in a begun 
relationship. They should be formally addressed and 
prayed with. But the chief exercise, in which they 
can as heartily partake as any, should be the singing 


310 


THE TREATMENT 


of simple hymns to Christ, such as are used by the Mo¬ 
ravian brethren for this purpose. In this manner, too, 
they will quite as much edify, as be edified, by the 
adult brethren. Their childish sympathies will, in this 
manner, be laid hold of at the earliest moment. They 
will perceive that so much, at least, of worship and 
religion is open to them as to others, and will begin to 
feel themselves at home among the brethren. 

In the next place, there should be some arrangement, 
in which it is understood that children, piously dis¬ 
posed, though not confirmed or accepted formally as 
members on their own account, may be allowed, either 
on consultation with the pastor or without, to come to 
the Lord’s table for the time, on the score of their 
initial membership in baptism, and their hopefully gra¬ 
cious character. In this manner, some confidence will 
be shown that they are going to claim their place, in 
full church relations, as soon as they are better matured 
in character and evidences; and this kind of confidence 
will have great power with them, to encourage and sup¬ 
port their struggles, and help them forward into an 
established Christian life. 

And then, once more, no child should ever be kept 
back from a complete and formal, or formally professed, 
membership in the body of Christ, simply because of 
his age. Some children will give more reliable evi¬ 
dence of Christian character at seven years of age than 
others at fourteen. Were every thing as it should be, 
and as the most genuine ideas of baptism and Christian 
nurture suppose, nearly all the subjects would be found 


THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 


811 


in the church, as brethren accepted, by the time they 
are twelve years old, and the greater part of them be¬ 
fore they are ten years old. 

While the church cooperates, in this manner, cherish¬ 
ing the baptized children as her own, it is understood, 
of course, that parents are to be engaged in putting 
forward their children and preparing them to bear the 
Christian profession. They are not to assume that the 
matter of true prudence here is all on one side, the side 
of detention; as if there were nothing to be sure of 
but that their children do not get on too fast. If that 
were all, it were the easiest thing in the world to settle 
every question, by the argument of delay; which neg¬ 
ative grace, alas! is about the only kind of function some 
parents are equal to. No, this grip of detention is not 
any so easy and safe kind of duty. It may put the 
child by his time for life. It may fatally discourage all 
his beginnings of godliness, and may so far choke hisf 
growth in good that he will never be recovered. 

The matters which I have gathered up in this dis¬ 
course, it is not to be denied, my brethren, make a 
melancholy picture. When we discover in how many 
ways even Christian parents themselves discourage the 
piety of their children, it ceases to be any wonder that 
they so often turn out badly, and come to a sad figure 
in their life. There are very few children brought up 
in Christian families, who do not, at some time, show a 
particular openness and tenderness to the calls of relig 
ion. These flowering times of piety, ought to be all 


812 


THE TREATMENT 


setting times of fruit, and I verily believe that they 
would be, if the flowers were not broken off by some 
rough handling, or discouraging treatment. And it 
should scarcely be any wonder that so many children 
of Christian parents come forward into life, in a dulled, 
uncaring mood; as if their conscience were under some 
paralysis, or as if they had somehow fallen out of all 
sense and sentiment of religion. The reason is, how 
often, that all their religious affinities have been bat¬ 
tered by parental discouragement. They think of 
religion, if they think of it at all, only as a kind of 
forbidden fruit; and since it has never been for them, 
why should it ever be ? 

Here, too, is the solution of, alas! how many cases, 
where Christian parents speak, with great sadness, of a 
time when this or that child, now utterly submerged 
under the world, or the world’s vices, was greatly exer¬ 
cised in matters of religion, fond of prayer, wanting 
even to be admitted to Christ’s table. How many chil¬ 
dren have been discouraged, kept back, with just the 
same effect I Treated as if their piety was impossible, 
how could it become a fact? 0, if they had been 
wisely and skillfully encouraged, assisted, led along, 
how different probably the state and character in which 
they would now be found ! 

A heavy shade is here thrown, too, upon all those 
sorrowful regrets in which Christian parents bewail 
what they call the mystery of their lot, in having chil¬ 
dren grown up to a prayerless and godless maturity. 
Alas! it is too easy, in most cases, to account for this 


THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 318 

mystery. When we see in how many ways children 
may be thrown off from the courses of holy obedience, 
or discouraged in them, we have a strong ground of 
presumption that the mystery deplored by their parents 
is not as deep as they suppose. For myself, when I 
look over this field of misuse, misconception, misdirec¬ 
tion, seeing in how many and subtle ways children are 
turned off from Christ, when they might be and ought 
to be drawn to his fold, it is no longer a wonder that 
they go astray; it would only be a greater wonder if 
they met the call of Christ more faithfully, and stood in 
a character more answerable to the privilege he gives 
them. 

27 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection 
with all gravity.”—1 Timothy , iii. 4. 

To be a Christian bishop, whether in a clergy of one 
order or of three, is to be set in a high office, demand¬ 
ing high qualifications. What may be taken as quali¬ 
fications, the apostle is here specifying; and among the 
rest, he names the character evinced by maintaining a 
good and sound government in the house. “For if a 
man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he 
take care of the church of God?” A very singular 
test, in one view, for a Christian bishop; one that passes 
by the matter of learning and eloquence, and church 
reputation, laying hold, instead, of a gift in which some 
very ordinary men, and not a few ordinary women, 
excel. And with good reason; for, in fact, how very 
much alike, in the elements of merit and success, are 
all that purchase to themselves a good degree, in what¬ 
ever rank, or sphere—alike in fidelity, order, patience, 
steadiness, attention, application to the charge that is 
given them. Kay, when the apostle drops in thought¬ 
fully what he takes to be the same thing in effect, as 
ruling one’s house well, viz: “ the having his children 
in subjection with all gravity,” the words themselves, 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


315 


appear to have a sound of character and office in them, 
as if spoken of a bishop with his flock. And what 
indeed is the house but a little primary bishopric under 
the father, taking oversight thereof? 

Family Government, then, is the subject here sug¬ 
gested for discussion. And we naturally endeavor— 

I. To ascertain what is the true conception of family 
government. 

Of course it is to be government; about that there 
ought to be no hesitation. It is not to be a mere nurs¬ 
ing, or dressing, or provisioning agency; not to be an 
exhorting, advising, consulting relationship; not to be 
a lavishing of devotion, or parental self-sacrifice; but 
the radical constitutive idea, that in which it becomes 
family government, is that it governs, uses authority, 
maintains law and rules, by a binding and loosing 
power, over the moral nature of the child. Parents, it 
would sometimes appear, fall into a practical ambiguity 
here—as if the governing power were a kind of sever¬ 
ity, or harsh assumption; not perceiving that, by com¬ 
mon consent, we speak of an ungoverned family as the 
synonym of a disorderly, wretched, and dishonored, if 
not ruined, family. There is no greater cruelty, in fact, 
than this same false tenderness, which is the bane of so 
many families. There is a kind of cruelty indeed, 
which is exactly opposite, and misses the idea of gov¬ 
ernment on the other side, viz: that brutish manner 
of despotic will and violence, which makes no appeal 
to the moral nature at all, driving straight by, upon the 


310 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


fears, in a battery of force. And yet, whether even 
this be really more cruel in its effects, than the false 
tenderness just named, is a fair subject of doubt. The 
true idea, that which makes the domestic order and 
state so beneficent, is that it is to be a state of govern¬ 
ment ; a state where love has authority, and presides in 
the beneficent order of law. 

But when we have reached this point, that family gov¬ 
ernment is to govern, we shall find that multitudes of pa¬ 
rents who assume the Christian name, have yet no practi¬ 
cal sense of the intensely religious character of the house, 
or the domestic and family state. They go into their of¬ 
fice loosely, and without any conception, for the most 
part, of what their authority means. This, I will now un¬ 
dertake to show, drawing out especially the points in which 
they most commonly seem to fall below the real sense of 
their office, in the opinions they hold concerning it. 

First of all, their family government is never con¬ 
ceived, in its true nature, except when it is regarded as 
a vice-gerent authority, set up by God, and ruling in his 
place. Instead of creating us outright, God has seen 
fit to give us existence under laws of reproduction; hav¬ 
ing it for his object, in the family order and relation¬ 
ship, to set us forth, under a kind of experience in the 
small, and in terms of sense, that faithfully typifies our 
wider relationship to Him, the eternal Father and in¬ 
visible Ruler of the worlds. "We are infants too, men 
and women in the small, that we may be as flexible in 
our will as possible. Our parents, if they are godly 
themselves, as by the supposition they will be, are to 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 31* 

personate God, in the double sense of bearing his natu¬ 
ral and moral image before us, ever close at hand; and 
also in the right of authority with which they are 
clothed. And, that they may have us at the greatest 
advantage, it is given them to clothe us, and feed us, 
and bathe us, day and night, in the unsparing and lav¬ 
ish attentions of their love; enjoying our enjoyments, 
and even their own sacrifices for us. First, the mother 
has us, at her bosom, as a kind of nursing Providence. 
Perused by touch and by the eyes, her soul of mater¬ 
nity, watching for that look and bending ever to it, 
raises the initial sense of a divine something in the 
world; and when she begins to speak her soft impera¬ 
tive, putting a little decision into the tones of her love, 
she makes the first and gentlest possible beginning of 
authority. And then the stiffer tension of the mascu¬ 
line word, connected with the wider, rougher provi¬ 
dence of a father's masculine force, follows in a stouter 
mode of authority, and the moral nature of the child, 
configured thereto, answers faithfully in a rapidly de¬ 
veloped sense of obligation. The parents are to fill, in 
this manner, an office strictly religious; personating 
God in the child's feeling and conscience, and bending 
it, thus, to what, without any misnomer, we call a filial 
piety. So that when the unseen Father and Lord is 
Himself discovered, there is to be a piety made ready 
for him; a kind of house-religion, that may widen out 
into the measures of God’s ideal majesty and empire. 
Hence the injunction, “Children obey your parents in 
the Lord.” They could not make a beginning with 
27 * 


318 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


ideas of God, or with God as an unseen Spirit; there¬ 
fore they had parents given them in the Lord—the 
Lord to be in them, there to personate and finite him¬ 
self, and gather to such human motherhood and father¬ 
hood, a piety transferable to Himself, as the knowledge 
of his nobler, unseen Fatherhood arrives. 

Again, it is another point, very commonly over¬ 
looked, or forgotten, that parental government is genu¬ 
ine, only as it bears rule for the same ends that God 
Himself pursues, in the religious order of the world. 
True family government will be just as religious as His, 
neither more nor less. It will have exactly the same ends 
and no other. Just here, accordingly, is the main root of 
mischief and failure in the government of Christian fam¬ 
ilies. The parents are not Christian enough to think of 
bearing rule for strictly Christian ends. They drop into 
a careless, irresponsible way, and rule for any thing that 
happens to chime with their own feeling or conven¬ 
ience. They want their children to shine, or be honor¬ 
able, or rich, or brave, or fashionable; so to serve them¬ 
selves in them, or their pride, or their mere natural 
fondness. They bring in, thus, bad motives to corrupt 
all government, and even to corrupt themselves. If 
they have some care of piety in their government, it is 
a kind of amphibious care, sometimes in one element 
and sometimes in another. They are never truly and 
heartily in God’s ends. And the result is that what 
they do in the name of religion, or to inculcate religion, 
shows their want of appetite, and has really no effect 
but to make both God’s authority and theirs irksome. 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


819 


Nothing answers the true purpose here, but to bring in 
all the noblest ideas of truth, and forgiveness and self- 
sacrifice, and assert a pitch of virtue in the house high 
enough to be inspiring. The government will then 
have a genuine authority and power, because the rule 
of God is in it. As it rules for God, and with God, 
God will be in it; otherwise it is mortal self-assertion 
only. 

Closely related is the conviction to be firmly held, 
that family discipline, rightly administered, is to 
secure, and may secure, a style of obedience in the 
child that amounts to a real piety. If we speak 
of conversion, family government should be a con¬ 
verting ordinance, as truly as preaching. For ob¬ 
serve and make due account of this single fact, that 
when a child is brought to do any one thing from a 
truly right motive, and in a genuinely right spirit, there 
is implied in that kind of obedience, the acceptance of 
all best and holiest principle. I do not mean, of course, 
that children are to be made Christians by the rod, or 
by any summary process of requirement. There is no 
such short method of compulsory piety here, as some 
are reported to have held, or put in exercise. But it is 
not absurd to expect and aim to realize in the family, a 
genuine spirit of obedience; obedience, that is, from 
the principle that God enthrones, and which underlies 
all piety—-just what the apostle means, if I understand 
him rightly, by having children “in subjection with all 
gravity.” In the phrase “ all gravity,” he is looking at 
a kind of obedience that touches the deepest notes 


820 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


of principle and character. Contrary to this, there is 
an obedience without principle, which is obedience with 
all levity; that which is paid to mere will and force; 
that which is another name for fear; that which is 
bought by promises and paid by indulgences; that 
which makes a time-server, or a coward, or a lying pre¬ 
tender, as the case may be, and not a Christian. This 
latter—that which makes a Christian—is the aim of all 
true government, and should never be out of sight foi 
an hour. Let the child be brought to do right because 
it is right, and not because it is unsafe, or appears 
badly, to do wrong. In every case of discipline for 
ill-nature, wrong, willfulness, disobedience, be it under¬ 
stood, that the real point is carried never till the child 
is gentled into love and duty; sorry, in all heartiness, 
for the past, with a glad mind set to the choice of doing 
right and pleasing God. How often is it true that in 
the successful carrying of such a point, (which can not 
be carried, save by great resources of love and gospel 
life in the parents,) the fact of a converted will is gained. 
And one must be a dull observer of children and their 
after life, who has not many times suspected that just 
the ones who are said to be converted afterwards, and 
suppose themselves to be, had their wills, not seldom 
bowed to this in their childhood, under the government 
of the house. 

Having so far indicated what is the true idea of fam¬ 
ily government as a Divine institution, let us next 
inquire — 


FAMILY GOYEENMENT. 


321 


II. By what methods it will best fulfill its gracious and 
beneficent purposes ? 

It is hardly necessary to say that the vice-gerent 
office to be maintained, and the gracious ends to be se¬ 
cured, make it indispensable that parents should them¬ 
selves be living in the Spirit, and be so tempered by 
their faithful walk, as to have the Christly character on 
them. Nothing but this will so lift their aims, gentle 
their passions, steady their measures and proceedings, 
as to give them that personal authority which is requi¬ 
site. For this authority of which I speak supposes 
much—so much of grace and piety, that God is ex¬ 
pressed in the life; so much as to even it in all princi¬ 
ple, fasten it in all moderation of truth and justice, 
gladden it in heaven’s liberty and peace, and, above all, 
clear it of sanctimony; for if any thing will drive a 
poor child mad with disgust of religion, it is to be tor¬ 
mented day and night with the drawlings and mock 
solemnities of a merely sanctimonious piety. Children 
love the realities, and are worried by all shams of char¬ 
acter. If then parents can not be deep enough in 
religion to live it naturally, and have it as an element 
of gladness, clear of all sanctimony, it is doubtful 
whether they might not better be even farther off from 
the semblance of it than they pretend to be. Of this 
one thing they may be sure, that they get no addition 
of personal authority by any thing put on; or by any 
prescribed longitudes of expression. The most pro¬ 
foundly real thing in the world is this matter of per¬ 
sonal authority. Jesus had it as no other ever had, 


322 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


because lie bad most of reality and divine truth in bis 
character; we shall have the same only as we have the 
same steady affinities in us, and the same Spirit without 
measure upon us. 

There is also another precondition of authority in 
parents closely related to this; I mean that they be so 
far entered into the Christian order of marriage, as to 
fulfill gracefully what belongs to the relation in which 
they are set, and show them to the children as do¬ 
ing fit honor to each other. By a defect just here, all 
authority in the house is blasted. Thus Dr. Tiersch, in 
his excellent little treatise on the Christian Family Life, 
says:—“A wife can not weaken the authority of the 
father without undermining her own, for her authority 
rests upon his, and if that of the mother is subordinated 
to that of the father, yet it is but one authority, which 
can not be weakened in either of the two who bear it, 
without injury to both. The mother, therefore, must 
consider it a matter of family decorum which is not to 
be broken, never even in little matters to contradict the 
father in the presence of the children, except with the 
reservation of a modest admission of his right of de¬ 
cision, and that in cases which admit of no delay. But 
just as much is it the duty of the husband to leave the 
authority of his wife unassailed in the presence of other 
members of the household; and when he is obliged to 
overrule her objections, to do it in a tender and kindly 
form. If he turns to her with roughness and harshness 
from jealousy of his place of rule, it is not only the 
heart of his wife which is estranged from him, with the 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


323 


children too intervenes a weakening of the moral power, 
under which they should feel themselves placed. If in 
their presence their mother is blamed as foolish or ob¬ 
stinate, and so lowered to the place of a child or a maid¬ 
servant, that sanctity immediately vanishes, which, in 
the eyes of the children, surrounds the heads of both 
father and mother in common.”* 

Again it is of the highest importance in family gov¬ 
ernment, that parents understand how early it be¬ 
gins—how easily, in fact, the great question of rule and 
obedience may be settled, or well-nigh settled, before 
the time of verbal order and commandment arrives. 
Thus there is what may be fitly called a Christian 
handling for the infant state, that makes a most solid 
beginning of government. It is the even handling of 
repose and gentle affection, which lays a child down to 
its sleep so firmly, that it goes to sleep as in duty bound; 
which teaches it to feed when food is wanted, not when 
it can be somehow made uneasy, or the mother is uneasy 
for it; which refuses to wear out the night in laborious 
caresses and coaxings, that only reward the cries they 
endeavor to compose; which places the child so firmly, 
makes so little of the protests of caprice in it, wears a 
look so gentle and loving, and goes on with such even¬ 
ness of system, that the child feels itself to be, all the 
while, in another will, and that a good will; consent¬ 
ing thus by habit and quietly to be lapped in authority, 
just as it consents to breathe in the lap of nature and 
her atmospheric laws. And so it becomes a thoroughly 


Page 99. 



324 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


governed creature, under the mere handling of its in¬ 
fantile age. Neither should it seem that this is, in any 
sense, an exaggeration. For though the government 
we speak of here is silent, and utters for the time no 
law, there still is law enough revealed to feeling 
in the mere motions and modes of the house. Who is 
ignorant that by jerks of passion, flashes of irritation, 
unsteady changes of caprice and nervousness, fits of 
self-indulgence, disgusts with self and life that are 
half the time allowed to include the child, songs and 
caresses both of day and night, that are volunteered as 
much to compose the mother’s or the nurse’s impa¬ 
tience as the child’s—who is ignorant that an infant, 
handled in this manner, may be kept in a continual fret 
of torment and ill-nature. Meantime there is, just op¬ 
posite, what a beautiful power of order, and quiet, and 
happy rule, when the motions and modes of the hand¬ 
ling are such as token peace, repose, firmness, system, 
confidence, and a steady all-encompassing love. Here 
is law, felt, we may even say, in every touch, entered 
into every sensational experience, confided in, submit¬ 
ted to, with all gravity. So that when the time of 
words arrives, the child is already under government, 
and the question of obedience and order is already half 
settled. 

Wc come now to the age of language, or the age 
when words begin to be used to express requirement 
and authority. Indeed this will be done, assisted by 
tones and signs of manner, even before the child itself 
is able to speak. 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


825 


And here it is to be noted that much depends npon 
the tone of command, or the kinds of emphasis em¬ 
ployed. It is a great mistake to suppose that what will 
make a child stare, or tremble, impresses more author¬ 
ity. The violent emphasis, the hard, stormy voice, the 
menacing air, only weakens authority; it commands a 
good thing as if it were only a bad, and fit to be no 
way impressed, save by some stress of assumption. Let 
the command be always given quietly, as if it had some 
right in itself, and could utter itself to the conscience 
by some emphasis of its own. Is it not well understood 
that a bawling and violent teamster has no real govern¬ 
ment of his team? Is it not practically seen that a 
skillful commander of one of those huge floating cities, 
moved by steam on our American waters, manages and 
works every motion by the waving of a hand, or by 
signs that pass in silence; issuing no order at all, save 
in the gentlest undertone of voice? So when there is, 
or is to be, a real order and law in the house, it will 
come of no hard and boisterous, or fretful and terma¬ 
gant way of commandment. Gentleness will speak the 
word of firmness, and firmness will be clothed in the 
airs of true gentleness. 

Nor let any one think that such kind of authority 
is going to be disrespected, or disregarded, because it 
moves no fright or fear in the subjects. That will 
depend on the fidelity of the parent to what he has 
commanded. How many do we see, who fairly rave in 
authority, and keep the tempest up from morning to 
night, who never stop to see whether any thing they 
28 


326 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


forbid or command is, in fact, observed. Indeed they 
really forget wbat they have commanded. Their man¬ 
dates follow so thickly as to crowd one another, and 
even to successively thrust one another out of remem¬ 
brance. And the result is that, by this cannonading 
of pop-guns, the successive pellets of commandment 
are in turn all blown away. If any thing is fit to be 
forbidden, or commanded, it is fit to be watched and 
held in faithful account. On this it is that the real em¬ 
phasis of authority depends, not on the wind-stress of 
the utterance. Let there be only such and so many 
things commanded, as can be faithfully attended to— 
these in a gentle and firm voice, as if their title to 
obedience lay in their own merit—and then let the child 
be held to a perfectly inevitable and faithful account; 
and, by that time, it will be seen that order and law 
have a stress of their own, and a power to rule in their 
own divine right. The beauty of a well-governed 
family will be seen, in this manner, to be a kind of 
silent, natural-looking power; as if it were a matter 
only of growth, and could never have been otherwise. 

At first, or in the earlier periods of childhood, au¬ 
thority should rest upon its own right, and expect to be 
obeyed just because it speaks. It should stake itself 
on no assigned reasons, and have nothing to do with 
reasons, unless it be after the fact; when, by showing 
what has been depending, in a manner unseen to the 
child, it can add a presumption of reason to all future 
commands. It is even a good thing to the moral and 
religious nature of a child, to have its obedience re- 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


327 


quired, and to be accustomed to obedience, on tbe 
ground of simple authority; to learn homage and 
trust, as all subject natures must, and so to accept the 
rule of God’s majesty, when the reasons of God are in¬ 
scrutable. There is little prospect that any child will 
be a Christian, or any thing but a skeptic, or a godless 
worldling, who has not had his religious nature un 
folded by an early subjection to authority, speaking in 
its own right. 

Nay, I will go farther; there is a certain use in hav¬ 
ing a child, in the first stages of government, feel the 
pressure of law as a restriction. For, as the law of 
God is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, so there is 
a like relation between law and liberty in the training 
of the house. It is by a certain friction, if I may so 
speak, on the moral nature, a certain pressure of con¬ 
trol, not always welcome, that the sense of law gets hold 
of us. Observances that we do not like, prepare us to 
a kind of obedience, further on, that is free—that wel¬ 
comes the same command because it is good, the same 
authority because it is wholesome and right. And so 
it comes to pass that a son, grown almost to manhood, 
will gladly serve the house, and yield to his parents a 
kind of homage that even anticipates their wishes, just 
because he has learned to be in subjection, with all 
gravity, under restrictions that were once a sore limit 
on his patience. 

At the same time it should never be forgotten, in 
this due assertion of authority and restrictive law, that 
there is a great difference between the imperative and 


328 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 

the dictatorial; between the exact and the exacting. 1 
have spoken already of the common fault of command¬ 
ing overmuch, and forgetting or omitting to enforce 
what is commanded; there is another kind of fault 
which commands overmuch, and rigidly exacts what is 
commanded; laying on commands, as it seems to the 
child, just because it can, or is willing to gall his peace 
by exacting something that shall cut away even the 
semblance of liberty. No parent has a right to put 
oppression on a child, in the name of authority. And 
if he uses authority in that way, to annoy the child’s 
peace, and even to forbid his possession of himself, he 
should not complain, if the impatience he creates grows 
into a bitter animosity, and finally a stiff rebellion. 
Nothing should ever be commanded except what is 
needed and required by the most positive reasons, 
whether those reasons are made known or not. 

Another qualification here to be observed, belongs 
to what may be called the emancipation of the child. 
A wise parent understands that his government is to 
be crowned by an act of emancipation; and it is a 
great problem, to accomplish that emancipation grace¬ 
fully. Pure authority, up to the last limit of minority, 
then a total, instantaneous self-possession, makes an 
awkward transition. A young eagle kept in the nest 
and brooded over till his beak and talons are. full- 
grown, then pitched out of it and required to take care 
of himself, will most certainly be dashed upon the 
ground. The emancipating process, in order to be well 
finished, should begin early, and should pass imper- 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


329 


ceptibly, even as age increases imperceptibly. Thus 
the child, after being ruled for a time, by pure au¬ 
thority, should begin, as the understanding is developed, 
to have some of the reasons given why it is required to 
abstain, or do, or practice, in this or that way instead 
of some other. The tastes of the child, too, should 
begin to be a little consulted, in respect to his school, 
his studies, his future engagements in life. When he is 
old enough to go on errands, and to labor in various 
employments for the benefit of the family, he should be 
let into the condition of the family far enough to be 
identified with it, and have the family cause, and pro¬ 
perty, and hope, for his own. Built into the family 
fortunes and sympathies, in this manner, he will begin, 
at a very early day, to command himself for it, and so 
will get ready to command himself for himself, in a 
way that will be just as if the parental authority were 
still running on, after it has quite run by. 

Is it necessary to add that a parent who governs at 
the point of authority will not, of course, allow himself 
to be known only as a bundle of commandments ? In 
order to have authority, he must have life, sympathy, 
feeling unbent in play. He must connect a gospel with 
his law, and so instead of being a law over the house, 
he must undertake to be a law written in the heart; 
winning love as commanding out of love, consumma¬ 
ting obedience, by the glad and joyous element in 
which he bathes the playful homage and trust of his 
children. 

As to the motives addressed by family government, 

28 * 


830 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


in a way of maintaining or securing obedience, they 
need to be of two kinds; such as belong to a character 
in principle, and such as belong to a character that is 
equivocal in it, or fallen below it. The first kind 
should never be left out of sight. They are such as 
these: doing right because it is right; loving God be¬ 
cause he loves the right; God^s approbation; the ap¬ 
probation of a good conscience; the sense of honor 
with himself, as opposed to the meanness of lying and 
deceit. These are, by distinction, the religious motives’; 
and where these are completely ignored, all others are 
radically faulty, of course. But there is, beside, a very 
great and hurtful mistake that is commonly made in 
choosing, from among the lower and second-class mo¬ 
tives, those which are really most questionable, and 
most likely to be followed by sinister effects. Here 
again we are to follow God, who undertakes to dislodge 
us, in the plane below principle, or keep us from set¬ 
tling into it, by raking it, every way, in a cannonade 
of penalty and fear. Ho, say the plausible sophisters 
of our day, in what they take to be its better wisdom, 
fear is a mean and servile motive; we will not make 
cowards of our children. They do not observe the 
very considerable distinction between terror and fear; 
that terror lays hold of passion, fear of intelligence; 
that one dispossesses the soul, the other nerves it to a 
wise and rational prudence; that one scatters all dis¬ 
tinctions of principle, and the other turns the soul 
thoughtfully towards principle. Missing this distinc¬ 
tion, they make their appeal sometimes to the sense of 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


331 


honor before men, frequently to the sense of appear¬ 
ance, or to what will be the appearance of the family, 
not less frequently to the desire of success in life; 
praising the shows of bravery and spirit, deifying, so to 
speak, human conventionalities and laws of fashion. 
They do not see the total want of dignity in these ap¬ 
peals' ; how they all put shams and shows, and falsities, 
in the place of solid realities; how they sort with all 
lying semblances of virtue, run the soul into all most 
cowardly fictions of time-serving, pretense, hypocrisy, 
sycophancy, and make even hollowness itself the prin¬ 
cipal substance of life. Therefore it is that God ap¬ 
peals to fear, backs authority and law by penalties that 
waken fear; because this one prudential motive has a 
place by itself, in not being positive or acquisitive, in 
any sense, but only negative; and so far has the sem¬ 
blance of unselfishness. It makes no one selfish to 
fear, though fear, as a motive, is not up to the level of 
principle loved for its own sake. The wise parent, 
therefore, will not be wiser than God; and wheresoever 
fear is needed, he will speak to fear, and make as little 
as possible of appearance, popularity, and opinion, un¬ 
derstanding that, if he is to have his children in sub¬ 
jection with all gravity, they must be brought into 
God’s principle, by a motive that is unambitious, un¬ 
worldly and real, and turns the soul away by no com¬ 
putations of pride and airy pretense. 

There is, then, to be such a thing as penalty, or pun¬ 
ishment, in the government of the house. And here 
again is a place where large consideration is requisite. 


332 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


First of all, it should be threatened as seldom as possi¬ 
ble, and next as seldom executed as possible. It is a 
most wretched and coarse barbarity that turns the house 
into a penitentiary, or house of correction. Where the 
management is right in other respects, punishment will 
be very seldom needed. And those parents who make 
it a point of fidelity, that they keep the flail of chas¬ 
tisement always a going, have a better title to the bas¬ 
tinado themselves than to any Christian congratula¬ 
tions. The punishments dispensed should never be 
such as have a character of ignominy ; and therefore, 
except in cases of really ignominious wickedness, it 
would be better to avoid, as far as may be, the infliction 
of pain upon the person. For the same reason the 
discipline should, if possible, be entirely private; a 
matter between the parent and child. Thus it is well 
said by Dr. Tiersch, “ If ever a severe punishment is 
necessary, it must be carried out so as to spare the 
child’s self-respect; not in the presence of his brothers 
and sisters, nor of the servants. For a wholesome ter¬ 
ror to the others, it is enough if they perceive, at a dis¬ 
tance, something of that which happens. And if only 
the smallest triumph over his misfortune, the least de¬ 
gree of mockery arise, bitterness and a loss of self- 
respect are the consequences to the child.”* 

Punishments should be severe enough to serve their 
purpose; and gentle enough to show, if possible, a ten¬ 
derness that is averse from the infliction. There is no 
abuse more shocking, than when they are administered 


* Page 153. 



FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


833 


by sheer impatience, or in a fit of passion. Nor is the 
case at all softened, when they are administered without 
feeling, in a manner of uncaring hardness. Whenever 
the sad necessity arrives, there should be time enough 
taken, after the wrong or detection, to produce a calm 
and thoughtful revision; and a just concern for tko 
wrong, as evinced by the parent, should be wakened, 
if possible, in the child. I would not be understood, 
however, in advising this more tardy and delicate way 
of proceeding, to justify no exceptions. There are 
cases, now and then, in the outrageous and shocking 
misconduct of some boy, where an explosion is wanted; 
where the father represents God best, by some terrible 
outburst of indignant violated feeling, and becomes an 
instant avenger, without any counsel or preparation 
whatever. Nothing else expresses fitly what is due to 
such kind of conduct. And there is many a grown up 
man, who will remember such an hour of discipline, as 
the time when the ploughshare of God’s truth went 
into his soul like redemption itself. That was the 
shock that woke him up to the staunch realities of prin¬ 
ciple ; and he will recollect that father, as God’s minis¬ 
ter, typified to all dearest, holiest, reverence, by the 
pungent indignations of that time. 

There is great importance in the closing of a penal 
discipline. Thus it should be a law never to cease from 
the discipline begun, whatever it be, till the child -is seen 
to be in a feeling that justifies the discipline. He is never 
to be let go, or sent away, sulking, in a look of willful¬ 
ness unsubdued. Indeed, he should even be required 


334 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


always to put on a pleasant, tender look, suck as clears 
all clouds and shows a beginning of fair weather. No 
reproof, or discipline, is rightly administered till this 
point is reached. Nothing short of this changed look 
gives any hope of a changed will. On the other hand, 
when the face of disobedience brightens out into this 
loving and dutiful expression, it not only shows that the 
malice of wrong is gone by, but, possibly, that there is 
entered into the heart some real beginning of right, 
some spirit of really Christian obedience. Many a 
child is bowed to holy principle itself, at the happy and 
successful close of what, to human eyes, is only a 
chapter of discipline. 

In order to realize this Christian issue of discipline, 
it is sometimes recommended that the child should be 
first prayed with, and made conscious, in that manner, 
of his own wrong, as before God, and of the truly relig¬ 
ious intentions by which the parent is actuated. Nc 
rule of this kind can be safely given; for there is great 
danger that the child will begin to associate prayer and 
religion with his pains of discipline; than which notk- 
* ing could be more hurtful. It would be far better, in 
most cases, if the prayer were to follow, coming in to 
express and gladden his already glad repentances. 

There are many things remaining still to be said, in 
order to a complete view of the subject; but there are 
two simple cautions that must not be omitted, and with 
these I close— 

1. Observe that great care is needed in the processes 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


335 


of detection, or the police of discovery. The child 
must not be allowed to go on breaking through the 
orders imposed, or into the ways of vice, not detected. 
This will make his life a practice in art and hypocrisy; 
and what is worse, will make him also confident of suc¬ 
cess in the same. Nothing will corrupt his moral na¬ 
ture more rapidly. There must be a very close and 
careful watch on the part of fathers and mothers, to let 
no deviation of childhood pass their discovery. And 
then, again, the greatest care and address will be needed, 
to keep their circumspection from taking on the look 
of a deliberate espionage, than which nothing will more 
certainly alienate the confidence and love needful to 
their just authority. Nothing wounds a child more 
fatally, than to see he is not trusted. Under such 
an impression, he will soon become as unworthy of 
trust as he has been taken to be. On the other hand, 
he will naturally want to be worthy of the trust he re¬ 
ceives. For the same reason, he should never be set 
upon by volunteer charges, or accusations which have 
no other merit than to be the ground of a cross-ques¬ 
tioning process. It is a harsh experiment that insults a 
child, in order to find out whether he is innocent or 
guilty. Besides, if he is guilty, there is no small risk 
of drawing him on to asseverations of innocence, that 
will fatally break down his truthfulness. Neither will 
it answer, in the case of little children, to make them 
reporters of their own wrongs, by allowing the under¬ 
standing that they shall so obtain pardon. For then 
they are only trained to a manner of sycophancy that 


336 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


mocks all government. What then shall be done? 
First of all, make much of the fact, that when a child 
is doing any secret wrong, he grows shy, ceases to be 
confiding and demonstrative, even as Adam, when he 
hid himself among the trees. Then let the watch grow 
close—watch his companions, the way he goes, the way 
he returns, his times, what he says, and what he par¬ 
ticularly avoids speaking of at all; speak of his shyness, 
and observe the reasons he assigns, question his reasons. 
It will be difficult for any young child to escape this 
kind of search. Indeed, this kind of search will almost 
never be needed if children are inspected carefully 
enough, at a very early period, when, as yet, they are 
simple, and the art of wrong has not begun to be 
learned. Accustomed then to the feeling that art hides 
nothing, they will never try to hide any thing by it 
afterwards. 

2. Have it as a caution that, in holding a magisterial 
relation, asserting and maintaining law, discovering and 
redressing wrong, you are never, as parents, to lose out 
the parental; never to check the demonstrations of 
your love; never to cease Horn the intercourse of 
play. If you assert the law, as you must, then you 
must have your gospel to go with it; your pardons 
judiciously dispensed, your Christian sympathies flow¬ 
ing out in modes of Christian concern, your whole ad¬ 
ministration gentled by tenderness. Above all, see that 
your patience is not easily broken, or exhausted. If 
your authority is not established in a day, you have 
small reason, in that fact, to be fretted, or discouraged, 


FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 


337 


and the less reason if you are and are seen to be, to 
believe that it ever can be established. There will 
sometimes be a child, or children, given, that have a 
more restive and less easily reducible nature than oth ■ 
ers, and partly because they have more to reduce. 
Time with such is commonly a great element, and as 
time is needed for them, patience will be needed in you. 
Let them have a little more experience of themselves, 
and of what a good and wise regulation means; let their 
rational nature be farther unfolded and come to your aid, 
and they will be gradually taking sides with your au¬ 
thority. The other and more tractable children, win¬ 
ning on their respect, will also assist in the taming of 
their repugnances. Meantime God, who perhaps gave 
you this trial to complete your patience, and purify all 
graces in you, will be raising you to a higher pitch of 
character and authority, which no most wayward child 
can well resist. And so it will be your satisfaction to 
see, in due time, that your reward is coming; that your 
children are growing into all truth and order together; 
melting into all confidence and good understanding with 
authority itself. Your triumph will now be sealed. 
You will have your house in subjection with all grav¬ 
ity; a little bishopric, as the apostle would say, gath¬ 
ered in heaven’s truth and unity, obedient Christian, 
filial, and free. 


29 


VI. 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, HOLIDAYS AND SUN¬ 
DAYS. 

“ And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in 
the streets thereof.”— Zechariah , viii. 5. 

Happy days are these that figure in the prophet’s 
vision. The people of the city are accustomed to scenes 
that are widely different, and give a peculiar zest to his 
picture. In the times of pestilence, in the horrors of 
the siege, in the sweeping out of captivity, what silence 
of desolation have they seen—the silence of ghastly 
death, the silence of gaunt famine, the silence of empti¬ 
ness and depopulated life. It shall no more be so; the 
city shall be God’s mountain, sheltered under his care, 
exempt from all the past desolations of pestilence and 
war—peaceful, populous, secure, and strong. All which 
is shown by two simple touches that make out the com¬ 
plete picture—“ There shall yet old men and old women 
dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with 
his staff in his hand for very age. And the streets of 
the city shall be full of boys and girls, playing in the 
streets thereof.” 

We can see, too, for ourselves that the prophet’s feel¬ 
ing goes into his picture; and that he has a natural 
delight in it himself. He sees the venerable crones 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES. 


339 


gathering at the corners, and blesses himself in the 
sight; hears the ring of happy voices in the streets and 
market-places, and plays his feeling in, with the play¬ 
ing boys and girls of the Lord’s glad mountain. Inspi¬ 
ration has not taken the nature out of him, but has 
only made him love the innocent glee of childhood the 
more. 

I draw it, accordingly, from this beautiful touch of 
the prophet’s picture, that religion loves too much the plays 
and pleasures of childhood, to limit or suppress them by any 
kind of needless austerity. 

Having set the young of all the animal races a play¬ 
ing, and made their beginning an age of frisking life 
and joyous gambol, it would be singular if God had 
made the young of humanity an exception ; or if, hav 
ing put the same sportive instinct in their make, he 
should restrict them always to a carefully practical and 
sober mood. What indeed does he permit us to see, in 
the universal mirth-time which is given to be the be¬ 
ginning of every creature’s life, that he has, Himself, a 
certain pleasure in their exuberant life, and regards their 
gambols with a fatherly satisfaction ? What, too, shall 
we judge, but that as all instincts are inserted for that to 
which they tend, so this instinct of play in children is 
itself an appointment of play ? 

Besides, there is a very sublime reason for the play- 
state of childhood which respects the moral and religious 
well-being of manhood, and makes it important that we 
should have our first chapter of life in this key. Play 
is the symbol and interpreter of liberty, that is, Chris* 


340 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


tian liberty; and no one could ever sufficiently conceive 
tlie state of free impulse and the joy there is in it, save 
by means of this unconstrained, always pleasurable ac¬ 
tivity, that we call the play of children. Play wants no 
motive but play; and so true goodness, when it is ripe 
in the soul and is become a complete inspiration there, 
will ask no motive but to be good. Therefore God has 
purposely set the beginning of the natural life in a mood 
that foreshadows the last and highest chapter of immor¬ 
tal character. Just as he has made hunger in the body 
to represent hunger in the soul, thirst in the body to 
represent thirst In the soul, what is sweet, bitter, sour 
in the taste to represent what is sweet, bitter, sour in 
the soul’s feeling, lameness to represent the hobbling of 
false principle, the fierce combustion of heat to repre¬ 
sent the rage of angry passion, all things natural to 
represent all things spiritual, so he prepares, at the 
very beginning of our life, in the free self-impulsion 
of play, that which is to foreshadow the glorious liberty 
of the soul’s ripe order and attainment in good. One 
is the paradise of nature behind us, the other the para¬ 
dise of grace before us; and the recollection of one 
images to us, and stimulates us in, the pursuit of the 
other. 

Holding this conception of the uses, and the very 
great importance of play, as a natural interpreter of 
what is highest and last in the grand problem of our 
life itself, we are led, on sober and even religious con¬ 
viction, to hold in high estimation the age of play. As 
play is the forerunner of religion, so religion is to be 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 


341 


the friend of play; to love its free motion, its happy 
scenes, its voices of glee, and never, by any needless 
austerities of control, seek to hamper and shorten its 
pleasures. Any sort of piety or supposed piety that is 
jealous of the plays and bounding activities of childish 
life, is a character of hardness and severity that has, so 
far at least, but a very questionable agreement with 
God’s more genial and fatherly feeling. One of the first 
duties of a genuinely Christian parent is, to show a gen¬ 
erous sympathy with the plays of his children; pro¬ 
viding playthings and means of play, giving them play¬ 
times, inviting suitable companions for them, and re¬ 
quiring them to have it as one of their pleasures, to 
keep such companions entertained in their plays, in¬ 
stead of playing always for their own mere self-pleasing. 
Sometimes, too, the parent, having a hearty interest in 
the plays of his children, will drop out for the time the 
sense of his years, and go into the frolic of their mood 
with them. They will enjoy no other play-time so 
much as that, and it will have the effect to make the 
authority so far unbent, just as much stronger and more 
welcome, as it has brought itself closer to them, and 
given them a more complete show of sympathy. 

On the same principle, it has an excellent effect to 
make much of the birthdays of children, because it 
shows them, little and dependent as they are, to be held 
in so much greater estimation in the house. When 
they have each their own day, when that day is so re¬ 
membered and observed as to indicate a real and felt 
interest in it by all, then the home in which they are so 
29 * 


842 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


cherished is proportionally endeared to feeling, and what 
has magnified them they are ready to magnify. 

On the same principle, too, public days and festivals, 
those of the school, those of the state, and those of relig¬ 
ion, are to be looked upon with favor, as times in which 
they are to be gladdened by the shows, and plays, and 
simple pleasures appropriate to the occasions; care be¬ 
ing only taken to put them in no connection with vice, 
or any possible excess. Let them see what is to be 
seen, enjoy what is to be enjoyed, and shun with just 
so much greater sensibility whatever is loose, or wild, 
or wicked. 

Religious festivals have a peculiar value to children; 
such I mean as the festivals of Thanksgiving and Christ¬ 
mas—one a festival of thanks for the benefits of Prov¬ 
idence, the other for the benefits of that supernatural 
providence which has given the world a Saviour and a 
salvation. Both are religious, and, in that fact, have 
their value; for nothing will go farther to remove the 
annoyance of a continual, unsparing, dry restraint upon 
the soul of childhood, and produce a feeling, as re¬ 
spects religion, of its really genial character, than to 
have it bring its festive and joyously commemorative 
days. One of the great difficulties in a properly relig¬ 
ious nurture is, that religion has to open its approaches 
to the soul, and make its beginnings in the shape of 
law; to say God requires of you this, forbids you in 
that, makes it your life to be set in all ways of obedi¬ 
ence. It takes on thus a guise of constraint, and so far 
wears a repulsive look; but if it can show how genial it 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 343 

is, how truly it loves even childish enjoyment, by gild¬ 
ing for it days of joy and festive celebrations, then the 
severities of law and responsible obedience take on 
themselves a look of benignity, and it begins to be felt 
that God commands us, not to cripple us, but to keep 
us safe and lead us into good. Such days, it is true, 
may be greatly abused by what is really unchristian; 
what is sensual and low, and very close to vice it¬ 
self ; and it is much to be regretted that the Christmas 
festival, otherwise so beautiful and appropriate, taken 
as a Christian commemoration of the greatest fact of the 
world’s history, has been so commonly associated with 
traditional looseness and excess. The friends of such a 
day can not do it any so great honor, as to clear it en¬ 
tirely of the excess and profane jollity by which it was 
made to commemorate any thing and every thing but 
Christ, that, setting it in character as a genuine religious 
festivity, they may give it to all friends of Christ as a 
day of universal observance. 

Happily there is now such an abundance of games 
and plays prepared for the entertainment of children, 
that there is no need of allowing them in any that stand 
associated with vice. Those plays are generally to be 
most favored that are to be had only in the open air, and 
in forms of exercise that give sprightliness and robustness 
to the body. At the same time, there needs to be a 
preparation of devices for the entertainment of children 
indoors in the evening; for the prophet did not give it 
as a picture of the happy days of Jerusalem, that the 
streets of the city should be full of boys and girls play 


344 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


ing there in the evening, or into the night, away from 
their parents and the supervision of their home. There 
is any thing signified in that but happiness and public 
well-being. Christian fathers and mothers will never 
suffer their children to be out in the public streets in 
the evening, unless they are themselves too loose and 
self-indulgent to assume that care of the conduct and 
the hours of their children, which is imposed upon them 
by their parental responsibilities. In country places, 
far removed from all the haunts of vice, and in neigh¬ 
borhoods where there are no vicious children, it might 
work no injury if boys were allowed to be out, now and 
then, in their coasting or skating parties in the evening. 
But the better rule in large towns, the absolute rule, 
having no exceptions as regards very young children, 
will be that they are never to be out or away from home 
in. the evening. Meantime, it will be the duty of the 
parents, and a kind of study especially of the mother, 
to find methods of making the house no mere prison, 
but a place of attraction, and of always cheerful and 
pleasant society. She will provide books that will feed 
their intelligence and exercise their tastes, pictures, 
games, diversions, plays; set them to inventing such 
themselves, teaching them how to carry on their little 
society, in the playful turns of good nature and fun, by 
which they stimulate and quicken each other; drilling 
them in music, and setting them forward in it by such 
beginnings that they will shortly be found exercising 
and training each other; shedding over all the play, in¬ 
fusing into all the glee, a certain sober and thoughtful 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 345 

look of character and principle, so that no overgrown 
appetite for sport may render violent pleasures neces 
sary, but that small, and gentle, and easy, and almosl 
sober pleasures, may suffice; becoming, at last, even 
most satisfactory. Here is the field of the mother’s 
greatest art, viz : in the finding how to make a happy 
and good evening for her children. Here it is that the 
lax, faithless, worthless mother most entirely fails; 
here the good and wise mother wins her best successes. 

Meantime some care must be exercised, that the relig¬ 
ious life itself be never set in an attitude of repug¬ 
nance to the plays of childhood. There must be no 
attempt to raise a conscience against play. Any such 
religion will certainly go to the wall; any such con¬ 
science will be certainly trampled, and things innocent 
will be done as if they were crimes; done with a guilty 
feeling; done with as bad effects every way, on the 
character, as if they were really the worst things. 
Nothing is more cruel than to throw a child into the 
attitude of conflict with God and his conscience, by 
raising a false conscience against that which both God 
and nature approve. It is nothing less than making a 
gratuitous loss of religion, required by no terms of rea¬ 
son, justified by no principle, even of Christian sacrifice 
itself. 

Suppose, for example, that a child has begun to show 
many pleasant evidences of love to God and all good 
things, but that he is eager still in play, or sometimes 
gets quite wild in the excitement of it. If, at such a 
time, it is sprung upon him, as a conclusion, that he 


346 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


does not truly love God, because be is so mucb taken 
by tbe excitements of play, be will tbus be discouraged 
without reason, in all bis confidences of piety, and it 
will be strange, if by-and-bye be does not begin to 
show a settled aversion to religious things. How can 
be do less, when be is compelled'to see it, as in conflict 
with all tbe most innocent and most truly natural in¬ 
stincts of bis age ? Or, to make tbe case more plain, 
drawing tbe question to a closer point, suppose tbe 
child, having so many evidences of piety in bis dispo¬ 
sitions, to be found at some kind of play in tbe family 
prayers, or that be rushes out from such prayers, in a 
manner that indicates eagerness and an emancipated 
feeling, or that be sometimes shows uneasiness in tbe 
hours of public worship on Sunday, or gives manifest 
tokens, in tbe morning, of a desire to escape from it, 
is it then to be set down, in your parental remonstran¬ 
ces with him, that be has, of course, no love to God, or 
tbe things of religion ? By no means. How often does 
tbe adult Christian feel even a disinclination to such 
things ; bow often burry away from bis formal prayer, 
that be may get into bis shop, or bis field, or into some 
negotiation that has haunted bis sleep in tbe night; bow 
often sit through sermons with bis mind on tbe game of 
politics, on tbe investment made or to be made; on bis 
journey, or bis mortgage, or tbe rivals be has in bis 
trade ? Is it worse for a child to be after bis plays, with 
only tbe same kind of eagerness ? Doubtless all such 
engrossments of tbe soul, whether of one kind or tbe 
other, are to be taken as bad signs, and ; as far as they 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 


847 


go, to be allowed their due weight. But which is worse 
and more fatal, the child’s undue possession by the 
spirit of play, or the man’s by the spirit of gain—the 
honest, artless, letting forth of nature by one, or the . 
deliberate, studied, scheming of the other—it is not dif¬ 
ficult, I think, to guess. No matter if the latter is 
more sober and thoughtful in the mood, observing a 
better show of gravity. For just that reason he is only 
to be judged the more harshly. If then we can bear 
with adult Christians, who are much in the world, and, 
forgetting themselves often, fall into moods of real dis¬ 
inclination to their duty, are we to set it down as some 
total evidence against the piety of a child, that, by 
mere exuberance of life, he is occasionally hurried 
away from sacred things, into matters of play ? Noth¬ 
ing is more unjust. Why should we require it of a 
child to be perfect, when we do not require it of a man ? 
And if we tolerate inconstancy of feeling or impulse 
in one, why not a much less worldly and deliberate in¬ 
constancy in the other ? 

Thus far we speak for the side of play, showing how 
far off it is from the purpose of religion to take away, 
or suppress, the innocent plays of childhood; how 
ready it is, on the other hand, to foster them and give- 
them sympathy. But it is not the whole of life, even 
to a child, to be indulged in play. There is such a 
thing as order, no less than such a thing as liberty; and 
the process of adjustment between these two contending 
powers, begins at a very early date. Under the law of 


348 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


the house, of the school, and of God, the mere play 
impulse begins very soon to be tempered and modera¬ 
ted by duty, and the problem is to make divine order 
itself, at last, a state of liberty analogous to the state of 
play, as already suggested. But the law that is to fash¬ 
ion such order will be first felt as a restriction; then, 
when it becomes the spirit of the life, the order itself 
will be liberty. There is no such thing, therefore, as a 
possibility to childhood of unrestricted play. Kestric- 
tion must be encountered as often as the order of the 
house demands it, then as often as the school de¬ 
mands it, then as often as the duties of religion demand 
it. Though such restrictions are never to be looked 
upon as hostile to the child’s play, but only as terms 
that are really necessary for his training into the 
organic relations under which he is born, best for his 
character, and even best for the enjoyments of his play 
itself. Otherwise he would either become sated by it 
in a short time, or his appetite for it would become so 
egregiously overgrown, that no possible devices or 
means could be invented to keep pace with it. Be¬ 
sides, a child, thus put to nothing but mere play, would 
very soon grow into such lightness and dissipation of 
feeling, as to be mentally addled, and would so be 
wholly incapacitated for any of the more sober and 
manly offices of life. 

Here, then, begins a process of training into moral 
order, which, without wishing to be any restriction 
upon play, is yet of necessity such a restriction. The 
child is required to conform his conduct, including his 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 349 

plays, to tlie peace of the house, to the conditions of 
sick persons in it, to the hours and times and general 
comfort of other inmates older than himself. Errands 
are put upon him that require him to forego his pleas¬ 
ures. When he is old enough, he is set to works of 
industry, it may be, that he may contribute something 
to the general benefit. By all which restrictions of play, 
he is only prepared to enjoy his pastimes and plays the 
more. The restrictions he will doubtless feel, at the 
time, and may be somewhat restive under them; but 
when he is thoroughly brought into the order of the 
house, and is set in the habit of serving it, as an inter¬ 
est of his own, then he will obey, contrive, and work, 
and even drudge himself to serve it, constrained by no 
motive but the service itself. 

In the same manner it will be laid upon him to be at 
his place in the school, to be punctual to his times, to 
miss no lesson, to hold his mind to his studies by close, 
unfaltering application, even though it cost him a loss 
of just that liberty in play that he would most like, 
and take it as the very bliss of his good fortune to have. 
Restricted thus by the order of the school, he will only 
enjoy his play-times the more, and finally will come to 
the enjoyment of study itself for its own sake. 

And so it will be in religion. There must, of course, 
be in it, what may be called restrictions upon children. 
All law is felt as restriction at the first, but it will not be 
that God makes war on their innocent plays; they only 
need as much, to be established in right conduct, well¬ 
doing, and piety, as to have their indulgence in such 
30 


350 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES 


pleasures. If God will take them away from all mis¬ 
rule and wretchedness, and will bring them into all best 
conditions of blessedness and peace, and even of liberty 
itself, he must put them under his commandments, train 
them into his divine will, and settle them in his own 
perfect order; and if he is obliged, in such a design, to 
infringe here and there upon their plays, it is not be¬ 
cause he likes the infringement, but only that he seeks 
the higher bliss of character for them. Thus when a 
little child is required to say his prayers and retire at 
the proper time for sleep, there is nothing to complain 
of in that kind of constraint, even though he wants to 
continue his play; for the thing required is plainly for 
his good—this for the double reason that it trains him 
toward obedience to God, and a life in heaven’s order, 
and because it even gives him a better appetite, and a 
fuller fund of vigor for, his play itself. And so it is 
universally; no constraint is to be blamed as infringe 
ment on his happiness, or a harsh severity against his 
pleasures, when, in fact, all highest happiness and 
widest range of liberty depend on the requirement 
imposed. 

The suggestions and distinctions thus far advanced, 
have, it will now be seen, another kind of use and im¬ 
portance, when taken as preparatives for the settlement 
of a great practical question, viz: how to use the Chris¬ 
tian Sabbath, or Sunday, so as to best honor the day 
in its true import, and best secure the ends of Christian 
nurture. The question is one that relates to a whole 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 


851 


seventh part of the child’s time, and to just that part 
which is most peculiarly religious in the form, and most 
likely to assist the implanting and due fostering of 
religious impressions. So much indeed is there in this 
matter of a right use of Sundays, that the success of 
family nurture will be more exactly represented and 
measured by that use, than by any thing else. Sunday 
is preeminently the child’s day for the soul, and the de¬ 
fective or bad use of it is never going to be compen¬ 
sated, by any wisest, best use of the other six days of the 
week. Indeed there is so much depending on this day, 
as regards human society, and the growth, and purity, 
and power of religion, that where it is lost in the train¬ 
ing of families, no other kind of advantage—no litur¬ 
gical drill, or eloquent preaching, or faithful and clear 
doctrine—can possibly make up the loss. 

The main question, here, is bow much, or little, of re¬ 
striction is to be laid upon children in the due observ¬ 
ance of the day? And the tendency is, it will be 
observed, to one or the other of two opposite ex¬ 
tremes—that of undue severity, or that of unchristian 
looseness—and this, for two distinct sets of reasons. 
Sometimes for the reason of self-indulgence, or indo¬ 
lence in the parents; and sometimes for the reason of 
insufficient views of the day, as it stands in the Scrip¬ 
ture, or in the judgments to be held of its uses. Thus 
it will be noted— 

1. That, where parents are too indolent for any kind 
of painstaking in their families, they will contrive to 
oase the burdens of their duty by one or the other of 


352 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


two distinct methods. They will either take up the 
notion that it is best and most soundly orthodox, to 
make a very stiff practice for their children; in which 
case they will perhaps require them to sit down within 
doors a good part of the day, learning catechism or 
scripture, stilling the house in that manner so as to 
allow them to sleep; or else they will take up the no¬ 
tion that, in modern times, we are to be more liberal, 
of course, being more intelligent; in which case they 
will get their children off to the Sunday-school, (with 
a lesson, or without,) or if they better like it, send them 
into the streets, or the fields. Here is the first great 
obstacle to be encountered, in securing a right and use¬ 
ful Sunday in families, viz: that invincible self-indul¬ 
gence in parents, which is the bane of all true care and 
responsibility; the poison, too, of all honest judgment 
in finding what the way of duty is. They have fre¬ 
quently no such earnest and prayerful desire of the 
religious benefit of their children, as fastens their own 
attention, or presses them into a study of plans and 
expedients for creating a religious interest in their 
minds. And then a double mischief follows, viz: that 
they grow rusty themselves in their religious character, 
and having no good conscience, subside into a state of 
silence and acknowledged incapacity; and next, that, 
having become mere drones of respectful nothingness 
in the positive duties of religion, they stand as actual 
impediments in the way of all genuine religious impres¬ 
sions in their families. The man who can make sacri¬ 
fices and take pains for h 4 s children at home will grow, 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 


353 


and be a useful Christian every where; and the man 
who can not, will be a dead weight every where. Here is 
the secret of a great part of that drying up of charac¬ 
ter which we so often deplore; and the secret also of 
that strangely irreligious temper, that hatred and con¬ 
tempt of all religion, that so often excites our wonder 
in the children -of nominally Christian families. Let 
no parent hope to have God’s blessing on the Sundays 
of his house, or indeed on any thing else that concerns 
the religious welfare of his children, unless he is willing 
to take pains, make sacrifices, burn as a light of holy 
example, for them and before them. Pass then, 

2. To the inquiry what is the true conception of our 
Lord’s day, or Sunday ? What, according to the Scrip¬ 
ture, and to all sound judgment of the day, as related 
to the Christian training of families, and to the general 
welfare of society, is the mode and amount of restriction 
imposed by it ? I think it will be found, in giving a 
right answer to this question, that the true use of the 
day lies between two errors, or extremes, that stand over 
against each other; one that makes a virtually Jewish 
day of it, and an opposite that, with undue haste, quite 
sweeps it away. Neither is the mode of scripture, and 
the two are about equally weak, as regards their philos¬ 
ophic grounds and reasons. 

According to the Scripture, God ordained a religious 
day, called a Sabbath, at the very morning of the crea¬ 
tion. This was the day that Moses found already exist¬ 
ing and only re-enacted in the ten tables of the moral 
.‘aw, as he did the statutes against lying and murder. 
30* 


354 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


The Sabbath stands, therefore, on precisely the same 
ground, scripturally, as the others; on the same too 
morally, save that the precise natural and social reasons 
for it, equally clear to God, are not so to us; and that, 
so far, it has the character to us of a simply divine 
institute, while the other nine statutes of the decalogue 
have the nature of acknowledged principles, grounded 
in their perceptible moral reasons. Could we also grasp, 
as God does, the precise natural reasons for observing 
just one day in seven as holy time, tracing perfectly the 
vast religious, and social, and moral, and physical ef¬ 
fects involved, it would have no more the look of an 
institute, and would become a principle of natural obli¬ 
gation, like the others that stand with it. 

In this view, it can not be repealed any more than 
the statute against theft, or false witness. It is not a 
Jewish day, in any proper sense of the term, but a day 
of humanity, a world’s-creation day; type also and 
ground of the new-creation day of the Lord. Moses 
went on, it is true, after the delivery of the decalogue, 
and ordained laws civil, and police regulations, by which 
the Sabbath was to be observed and enforced, and it 
was these that gave a Jewish character to their Sab¬ 
bath. And, so far, no farther, it was that the Sabbath 
was repealed, in becoming a Lord’s day. When Paul 
complains to the Colossians, that they “observe new 
moons and Sabbaths,” and boldly rebukes the Galatians, 
that they “turn again to the beggarly elements desiring 
to be in bondage,” and “observe days, and months, and 
times, and years,” he does not mean to call the seventh 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 


8 55 


day of the decalogue beggarly elements, any more than 
he does the command to have but one God, Or not to steal 
or kill. The beggarly elements are the political addi¬ 
tions, those rigors of observance that were added by the 
political statutes and the religious drill of the ritual; 
designed, as it was, for a slavish people, low in their 
perceptions, and unable to know religion at all, save in 
the practice of austerities under it. Restriction was to 
them, at their low point, about the only religious con¬ 
ception they were equal to, and their whole ritual econ¬ 
omy had a great part of its merit, in the stringent close¬ 
ness of it, and the perpetual girding of their practice 
under its hard austerities. So far the whole economy 
was to be displaced, and the civil-law Sabbath was to 
go down with it. But the more ancient Sabbath be¬ 
longed to the covenant of promise itself, and had the 
same kind of freedom and genial life in it that per¬ 
tained, in Paul’s view, to the whole Abrahamic order in 
religion. We can see too, for ourselves, that, so far as 
it is affirmed in the moral code of the decalogue, in dis¬ 
tinction from the civil law, it has a character of extreme 
beauty and benignity. What can be a more genial to¬ 
ken for God, than that he appoints such an institute of 
universal rest from labor? And what could evidence 
a more beautiful mercy than that God should take the 
part, in this manner, of all labor, even that of servants 
and slaves, and indeed of the laboring beasts, the oxen 
and the asses, asserting his protection over them (beau¬ 
tiful lesson of mercy to animals!) even against the sel¬ 
fishness of their owners, and allowing them to have a 


350 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


respite to tlieir otherwise endless toils. There is, in fact, 
no restrictive word in the commandment, save what 
may be felt of restriction in the injunction to “keep the 
day holy,” and even that is interpreted, to a great de¬ 
gree, by the simple requirement of a cessation from 
labor; though it is, doubtless, to be understood that 
the day is duly hallowed, only by a careful devotion of 
it to the uses of religion. Is there any thing harsh or 
unduly restrictive in such a day? Does Christianity 
itself find any thing to accuse, or any want of benignity 
in it? 

There is, then, no pretext of authority in the Scrip¬ 
ture for making the Lord’s day, or Sunday, a Jewish 
day to children. And those parents who make it a 
point of fidelity to lay it on their children, according to 
the strict police regulations of the Jewish code, would 
be much more orthodox, if they went farther back, and 
took up conceptions of the day some thousands of years 
older. When they assume that every thing which can 
be called play in a very young child is wrong, or an 
offense against religion, they try, in fact, to make Gala¬ 
tians of their children; incurring a much harsher, Chris¬ 
tian rebuke, than if they only turned to the beggarly 
elements themselves, and laid their own souls under 
the bondage. What can a poor child do, that is cut off 
thus, for a whole twenty-four hours, from any right to 
vent his exuberant feeling—impounded, strictly, in the 
house and shut up to catechism; or taken to church, 
there to fold his hands and sit out the long solemnities 
of the worship, and what to him is the mysterious lingo 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 


357 


of preaching; then taken home again to struggle with 
the pent up fires, waiting in dreary and forlorn vacan¬ 
cy, till what are called the mercies of the day are over? 
What conception does he get of religion, by such kind 
of treatment, but that it comes to the world as foe to 
every bright thing in it; a burden, a weariness, a tariff, 
on the other six days of life ? 

But there comes in, here, a grand scripture reason for 
some sort of restriction, viz: that restriction is the 
necessary first stage of spiritual training every where. 
Instead of rushing into the conclusion, therefore, as 
many parents do, that all religious observances which 
create a feeling of restraint, or become at all irksome to 
chidren, are of course hurtful, and raise a prejudice in 
their minds against religion, the Scripture boldly asserts 
the fact that all law begins to be felt as a bondage. 
Law and gospel have a natural relationship, and they 
are bound together every where, by a firm interior ne¬ 
cessity. It is so in the family, in the school, and in 
religion. The law state is always felt to be a bondage, 
and the restriction is irksome. By-and-bye, the good¬ 
ness of the law, and of them by whom it is adminis¬ 
tered, is fully discovered, and the obedience that began 
as restriction merges in liberty. The parents are obeyed 
with such care, as anticipates even their wishes; the 
lesson, that was a task, is succeeded by that free appli¬ 
cation which sacrifices even health and life to the eager¬ 
ness of study; and so the law of God, that was origin¬ 
ally felt only in the friction, rubbed in by that friction, 
is finally melted into the heart by the cross of Jesus, 


358 


PLATS AND PASTIMES, 


and becomes the soul’s liberty itself. It is no fault then 
of a Sunday that it is felt, in some proper degree, as a 
restriction; or even that the day is sometimes a little 
irksome to the extreme restiveness of children. All re¬ 
straint, whether in the family or the school, is likely to 
be somewhat irksome at the first. The untamed will, 
the wild impulse of nature, always begins to feel even 
principle itself in that way of collision with it. Nor is 
it any fault of the Sunday observance, that it has, to 
us, the character of an institute. If it were a mere law 
of natural morality, we might observe it without any 
thought of God’s will; but if we receive it as an insti¬ 
tute, we acknowledge God’s will in it; and nothing 
has a more wholesome effect on just this account, than 
the being trained to an habitual surrender to what God 
has confessedly enjoined or instituted by his will. It is 
the acknowledging of his pure authority, and is all the 
more beneficial, when the authority is felt in a some¬ 
what restrictive way. The transition too is easy from 
this to a belief in the supernatural facts of Christianity. 
The conscience and life is already configured to such 
faith; for whatever is accepted as an institution of God, 
is accepted as the supernatural injunction of his will. 

The flash judgments, therefore, of many, in respect 
to the observance of Sunday, are not to be hastily ac¬ 
cepted. We are not to read the prophet, as if promis¬ 
ing that the streets of the city shall be full of boys and 
girls, on the Lord’s holy day, playing in the streets 
thereof; or as if that kind of license were necessary to 
clear the irksomeness of an oppressive observance; or 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 


$59 


as if the power of religion were to be increased by 
removing every thing in it, which disturbs the natural 
impatience of restraint. Some child that was, for ex¬ 
ample, now grown up to be a man—a profligate it may 
be, a sworn infidel, a hater ofiall religion—laughs at the 
pious Sundays that his godly mother made him keep, 
and testifies to the bitter annoyance he suffered under 
the irksome and superstitious restrictions thus imposed 
on his childish liberty. Whereupon some liberalist or 
hasty and superficial disciple, immediately infers that 
all Sunday restrictions are injurious, and only raise a 
hostile feeling in the child toward all religion. Where¬ 
as it may be, in the example cited, for such are not very 
infrequent, that the child was never accustomed to re¬ 
striction at any other time as he ought to have been, or 
that his mother was too self-indulgent to exert herself 
in any such way for his religious entertainment, as to 
respite and soften the strictness of the Sunday observ¬ 
ance. Perhaps the requirement was really too restric¬ 
tive, or perhaps it was so little and so unevenly restric¬ 
tive, as to make it only the more annoying. Be it as it 
may, in this or any particular example, a true Sunday 
observance needs to be restrictive in a certain degree, 
and needs to be felt in that way, in order to its real 
benefit. What is wanted is to have God’s will felt in 
it, and then to have it reverently and willingly ac¬ 
cepted. A Sunday turned into a holiday, to avoid the 
supposed evil of restrictiveness, would be destitute ox 
religious value for just that reason. 

The true principle of Sunday observance, then, ap- 


MO PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 

pears to be this: that the child is to feel the day as a 
restriction, and is to have so much done to excite in¬ 
terest, and mitigate the severities of restriction, that he 
w ill also feel the true benignity of God in the day, and 
learn to have it as one of his enjoyments. When the 
child is very young, or just passing out of infancy, it 
■w ill be enough that, with some simple teaching about 
God and his day, a part of his more noisy playthings are 
taken away; or, what is better than this, that he have 
a distinct Sunday set of playthings; such as may repre¬ 
sent points of religious history, or associate religious 
ideas, abundance of which can be selected from any 
variety store without difficulty; then, as the child ad¬ 
vances in age, so as to take the full meaning of lan¬ 
guage, or so as to be able to read, the playthings of the 
hands and eyes will be substituted by the playthings 
of the mind; which also will be such as connect some 
kind of religious interest—books and pictures relating 
to scripture subjects, a practice in the learning and be¬ 
ginning to sing Christian hymns, conversations about 
God and Christ, such as bring out the beauty of God’s 
feeling and character, and present Him, not so much 
as a frightful, but more as a friendly and attractive 
being; for the child who is only scared by God’s ter¬ 
rors and severities, will very soon lose out all propor¬ 
tional conceptions of him, and will want to hear of him 
no more. Even the Sunday itself that only brings him 
to mind will, for just that reason, become a burden. 
The endeavor should be to excite a welcome interest in 
the day and the subjects it recalls. 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 36l 

And tlie devices that may be used are endless. The 
natural history of Palestine, the rivers, lakes, moun¬ 
tains, every city, every plain, will be easily associated 
in the child’s memory, with the events and characters, 
and religious transactions of the sacred history; so with 
lessons of duty and sentiments of piety. For such uses, 
an embossed map of the Holy Land would be invalu¬ 
able in a family of young children. Here are marked 
the sites of towns and cities, and the face of the ground 
is given on which they stood, or stand. Here was the 
locality of a battle, on this mountain or slope, or in 
this plain, or by this river. Here dwelt some patriarch, 
or prophet, or ministering woman. Looking over these 
ranges of mountain, through these valleys, and across 
these lakes and plains, questions of locality, geography, 
prospect, transaction, miracle, travel, can be raised with 
endless variety, such as will sharpen the intellectual 
curiosity, and the sense of religion together. The 
whole country may be daguerreotyped in this manner 
on the child’s mind, and a tenfold interest excited in 
every event, whether of the Old or Hew Testament 
history. 

The day itself also will be raising fruitful topics of 
inquiry. The topics of public preaching, especially 
those which relate to Christ—Christ the child, Christ 
the friend, brother, bread, way, reconciling grace—will 
raise interesting questions in the child’s mind, and he 
will be delighted if the parent can make out a good 
and lively child’s version of them. 

Hearing much too of the church, and the communion 

31 


362 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 


of saints in its order and ordinances, lie will want to 
know more exactly what the church is, what it is for, 
and who are in it. And when he is rightly informed 
concerning it, as being God’s holy family, or school, in 
which all the members are disciples or learners to¬ 
gether, and how Christ himself dwells in it, unseen, as 
the teacher and head, preserving its order from age to 
age, and dispensing gifts of life and salvation to them 
that are folded with him in it, how tenderly will it 
move his feeling, and with what gladness, to hear that 
he also is a member, whom Christ has accepted before¬ 
hand, to grow up as a disciple in it. His feeling will thus 
begin at once to take sides with it, as with his family 
itself, and he will be drawn along into the spirit and 
cause of it, just as he is into the cause of his family. 

Perhaps too he will have witnessed the sacraments, 
the holy supper, and baptism as administered to in¬ 
fants, and he will be asking, probably, for some ex¬ 
planation of these. And nothing can have a more be¬ 
nign effect on a child’s religious feeling than to be 
trained to a genuine faith in sacraments. But, in order 
to this, they must be sacraments; that is, observances 
appointed by God, as the occasions of a special faith in 
the special visitations and powers he engages to bestow 
on the receivers. 

We have become even a little jealous of sacraments. 
Our recoil from the extravagances of priestly magic 
has been carried too far. We keep them on foot, but 
we can scarcely be said to have faith in them, or to use 
them. The very attitude of mind they require is what 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 


863 


we want—want in the family, want in the chnrcli. 
They set us before God in just the way to receive Him 
best. He knew exactly what we wanted, and there¬ 
fore gave them to communicate his own divine power 
in them. Suppose that Carthage, in giving to her sons 
an oath ( sacramentum ) of eternal hostility to Eome, had 
been able to pledge a war-grace also, going into battle 
with them to make them strong before their enemy 
and always victorious, how eagerly would they have 
taken hold of it, in the terrible encounters of the field! 

The supper then is to be a sacrament and no merely 
monumental affair, as if it were a coming to the tomb 
of Jesus to read his inscription; but it is to be an occa¬ 
sion where he is to be discerned, manifested as dis¬ 
cerned, in his most real, only real, presence; dispens¬ 
ing himself and his reconciling peace to the soul. Ex¬ 
plained thus to the child, in a manner adapted to his 
understanding, it is also to be added—“ this is for you, 
and Christ is waiting to receive you and bless you in it, 
whenever you can ask it truly believing that he will, 
according to the faith to which you were pledged in 
your baptism.” I see no objection whatever to his being 
taken to the supper casually, whenever his childish piety 
really and seriously desires it; unless some opposing 
scruples in the church, or the minister, should make it 
unadvisible. Christ, I am sure, would say—“ Suffer 
the child and forbid him not.” 

The sacrament of baptism, which he will often see 
dispensed to infants—and they ought always to be pre¬ 
sented in a public way, or in the open church, for that 


m 


PLAYS AND PASTIMES 


purpose—can be bandied, in these Sunday conversa¬ 
tions, with still greater effect. This preeminently is the 
child’s sacrament; signifying no regenerative work 
done upon the child, (opus operaium ,) but the promise 
of an always cherishing, cleansing, sealing mercy, in 
which he is to be grown, as one that is born in due 
time; and which he is always to believe in, and be 
taking hold of, in all his childish struggles with evil. 
And he is to have it, not as a sacrament dispensed once 
for all and ended, but as a perpetual baptism, always 
distilling upon him, pledged to go with him, overliving 
his many faults and falls, and operating restoratively 
when it can not progressively, assisting repentances 
when it can not growths in good. He is thus to be 
always putting on Christ, as being baptized into Christ, 
and to live in the washing of regeneration and the 
renewing of the Holy Ghost, shed on us abundantly 
through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Sentiments of pro- 
foundest reverence for his baptism are to be always 
cherished in him. He is to have it as the one pure 
thing that has touched, and always touches him. Fam¬ 
ily government, the family prayers, the saintly mother’s 
kiss, every thing earthly, has the touch and stain of 
evil; but the sacrament of God’s pure Spirit has not. 
All purest sympathy of God is here with him. He is 
God’s child, and is to be God’s man. Using thus his 
baptism, growing up into his baptism, obligation will 
be serious, but never oppressive; for he breathes for¬ 
giving help, and has it for his element. 

How all these subjects of the Sunday conversation— 


HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 365 

the church, the supper and baptism—being institutes 
of God, like the day itself, chime with the day, and go 
to keep alive the same institutional faith, thus to keep 
alive the faith of a supernatural religion and make it 
habitual. Nature being all, there is no Sunday, no 
church, no sacraments. All God’s institutes are set 
up on the world by His immediate authority, never 
grown out of nature and her causes. And it is just 
here that the childish affinities are most readily taken 
hold of by religion. Children want the supernatural; 
and the Lord’s day, used in this manner, or enlivened 
by this kind of teaching, will prepare an ingrown habit 
of faith, and will never annoy them, or worry them, by 
its reasonable restrictions. They will “ count the Sab¬ 
bath a delight, and the holy of the Lord honorable,” 
and will have beside, all the blessings of the prophet 
that follow. Under such a practice, religion, or faith, 
will be woven into the whole texture of the family life, 
and the house will become a truly Christian home. 
Nothing will be remembered so fondly, or steal upon 
the soul with such a gladsome, yet sacred, feeling after¬ 
ward, as the recollection of these dear Sundays, when 
God’s light shone so brightly into the house, and made 
a holiday for childhood so nearly divine. 

31 * 


VII. 


THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING OF CHILDREN. 

But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been 
assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them.—2 Timothy , iii. 14. 

This exhortation of the apostle to his young friend 
Timothy, is the more remarkable that it relates to his 
training in the Old Testament scriptures, which were 
the only sacred writings known at the time of his child¬ 
hood—“ And that, from a child, thou hast known the 
Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto 
salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” His 
father was a Greek, (Acts xvi. 1,) and probably an un¬ 
believer ; but his mother was a woman of such piety, 
that she omitted nothing in the training of her son, and 
the apostle speaks of her, in the same epistle, even as 
having let down upon him a kind of piety by entail. 
But her faithful lessons—these are what he is now call¬ 
ing to mind; and it is affecting to notice that he not 
only charges it on him to remember what he has learned 
from the Scriptures, because they are God’s word, but 
also to value the same things the more, “ knowing of 
whom he has learned themthat is, from his gracious 
and faithful mother. Under cover of this beautiful ex¬ 
ample, as it appears in all the parties concerned, the 
young minister and disciple, the godly mother and her 


THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING. 367 

instructions, the apostle and his congratulations, you 
will perceive that I am going to speak of— 

The Christian teaching of children. 

And I can not do better than to notice, in the begin- 
ning, three points which stand upon the face of the 
apostle's exhortation. 

1. The very great importance of this teaching, when 
rightly dispensed. It is not indeed the first duty of the 
parent, for other duties go before, as we have already 
seen, preceding even the use of language. Neither is 
it, as a great many parents appear to assume, a matter 
in which their religious duties to their children are prin¬ 
cipally summed up. It is not every thing to teach, or 
verbally instruct their children, least of all to indoc¬ 
trinate them in the formulas and theoretic principles of 
the faith. But how very great importance must there 
be in the teaching, when an apostle, setting his young 
friend in charge as a preacher of the gospel, bids him 
continue still in the teachings of his godly mother, and 
even to remember them for her sake. The New Testa¬ 
ment preacher is exhorted still to be an Old Testament 
son, and is sent forth, in the power of the ancient Scrip¬ 
ture, even after Christ has come. And just so it will 
ever be true of the ripest and tallest of God’s saints, 
who were trained by His truth in their childhood, that 
however deep in their intelligence or high in spiritual 
attainments they have grown to be, the motherly and 
fatherly word is working in them still; and is, in fact, 
the core of all spiritual understanding in their character. 


368 


THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 


2. It is to be noted that the teaching of Timothy’s 
mother was scriptural—“ And that, from a child, thou 
hast known the Holy Scriptures.” They had, as far as 
we have been able to learn, no catechisms in that day. 
The ten commandments and certain selected Psalms, 
were probably the scriptures in which they were most 
exercised, and which probably Timothy had “ learned,” 
in the sense of having them stored in his memory. 
And there is this very great advantage in the scriptural 
teaching, or training, that it fills the mind with the 
word and light of the Spirit, and not with any mere 
wisdoms of opinion. And there is the less reason, now, 
for going out of the divine word to get lessons for the 
teaching of children, that our scripture roll is enlarged 
by the addition of the words and history of Christ him¬ 
self. In a right use of the Scripture, thus amplified 
by the gospel, there is no end to the subjects of interest 
that may be raised. The words are simple, the facts are 
vital, the varieties of locality, dialogue, incident, char¬ 
acter, and topic, endless. 

I do not undertake to say that nothing shall be taught 
which is not in the words of the Scripture. But it 
must be obvious that very small children are more likely 
to be worried and drummed into apathy by dogmatic 
catechisms, than to get any profit from them. If exer¬ 
cised in them at all, it should be at a later period, when 
their intelligence is considerably advanced; that they 
may, at least, get some shadow of meaning in them, to 
repay the labor of committing them to memory. It is 
generally supposed, in the arguments urged for a train- 


OF CHILDREN. 


869 


ing in catechism, that the real advantage to be gained is 
the fastening or anchoring of the child in some fixed 
faith. But the deplorable fact is, that what is called a 
fastening is really the shutting in, or encasing of the 
soul, in that particular shell of opinion—the training of 
the child to be a sectarian before he is a Christian. His 
anchorage in some Christian belief, which is certainly 
desirable, would be accomplished much more effectually, 
if he were trained, for example, to recite the Apostle’s 
or the Nicene creed. Here he does not merely mem* 
orize, but he assents; and, what is more, does it by an 
act of practical homage, or worship—a confession. 
And then what he assents to is no matter of opinion, or 
speculative theology, but a recitation of the supernatural 
facts of the gospel, taken simply as facts. For these 
facts are intelligible even to a very young child, and 
will be recited always with the greater interest, that the 
recitation is itself a religious act, or confession. 

I am principally concerned here with the case of very 
young children, not with such as are farther advanced 
in age, or intelligence; and there is no room for doubt, 
in their case, whatever may be decided in respect to 
others, that the teaching of Timothy’s mother, the 
scripture teaching, is to be preferred. The memoriz¬ 
ing of the ten commandments and the Lord’s prayer, 
followed by the Apostle’s creed and the simplest 
Christian hymns, connected with scripture readings, 
conversations, and discussions, will compose a body of 
teaching specially adapted to a child, and most likely to 
make him wise unto salvation. 


370 


THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 


3. It is to be noted that the most genuine teaching, 
or only genuine teaching, will be that which interprets 
the truth to the child’s feeling by living example, and 
makes him love the truth afterwards for the teacher’s 
sake. It is a great thing for a child, in all the after life, 
to “know of whom” he learned these things, and to see 
a godly father, or a faithful mother, in them. No truth 
is really taught by words, or interpreted by intellectual 
and logical methods; truth must be lived into mean¬ 
ing, before it can be truly known. Examples are 
the only sufficient commentaries; living epistles the 
only fit expounders of written epistles. When the 
truly Christian father and mother teach as being 
taught of God, when their prayers go into their 
lives and their lives into their doctrine, when their 
goodness melts into the memory and heaven, too, 
breathes into the associated thoughts and sentiments 
to make a kind of blessed memory for all they teach, 
then we see the beautiful office they are in, fulfilled. 
In this manner, Timothy was supposed to have a com¬ 
plete set of recollections from his mother woven into 
his very feeling of the truth itself. It was more true be¬ 
cause it had been taught him by her. There was e\ en 
a sense of her loving personality in it, by which it 
always had been, and was always to be, endeared. On 
the other hand, it will always be found that every kind 
of teaching in religion, which adds no personal interest, 
or attraction to the truth, sheds no light upon it from a 
good and beautiful life, is nearly or quite worthless. 
And here is the privilege of a genuinely Christian father 


OF CHILDREN. 


871 


and mother in their teaching, that they pass into the 
the heart’s feeling of their child, side by side with God’s 
truth, to be forever identified with it, and to be, them¬ 
selves, lived on and over with it, in the dear eternity it 
gives him. 

But these are general considerations, which it is suffi¬ 
cient to have suggested without further dwelling upon 
them. There are yet a great many subordinate and 
particular points, of a more promiscuous character, to 
which also I must call your attention. And I deem it 
here a matter of consequence to make out, first of all, a 
somewhat extended roll of things, which are not to be 
taught; for so many things are taught which are not 
true for any body, and so many which are only theo¬ 
logically true for minds in full maturity—to all others 
meaningless and repulsive—that many a child is fatally 
stumbled in religion, just because of his teaching. 

First of all, then, children are not to be taught that 
they were regenerated in their baptism. That will only 
convert the rite into a superstition, and put the child in 
a totally false position, where he will rest his Christian 
title on a mere outward transaction already past, and 
what is even worse, on a function of priestly magic. 
Furthermore, if the child should turn out, when he is 
fully grown, to be a totally reckless and profane person, 
having no pretense, or even semblance of religious 
character, it will now be discovered to him that his re¬ 
generation meant nothing, had no practical effect or 
value, and since there is no second baptismal regenera- 


372 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 

tion, it will only be left him to have neither any care 
for the old, or hope of a new that is better. Indeed he 
must now be saved, for aught that appears, without re¬ 
generation ; which makes a very awkward kind of gos¬ 
pel. If the child could be taught that his baptism 
signifies regeneration; supposing a pledge on God’s part 
of the necessary grace, and so the fact presumptive, that 
the faith and careful training of his parents shall be so 
far issued in a gracious character, that his very first 
putting forth of good endeavor, (having been divinely 
prepared,) shall be crowned with Christian evidence, it 
would be well. But no young child can grasp such a 
conception evenly enough to hold it. The most that 
can be said to him, therefore, of his baptism, is that 
God gave it to his parents and to himself, as a pledge 
of the Holy Spirit, and all needed help, that he may 
grow up into good, as a regenerated man. 

As little are young children to be taught that they 
are of course unregenerated. This, with many, is even 
a fixed point of orthodoxy, and of course they have no 
doubt of it. They put their children on the precise 
footing of heathens, and take it for granted that they 
are to be converted in the same manner. But they 
ought not to be in the same condition as heathens. 
Brought up in their society, under their example, bap¬ 
tized into their faith and upon the ground of it, and 
bosomed in their prayers, there aught to be seeds of 
gracious character already planted in them; so that no 
conversion is necessary, but only the development of a 
new life already begun. Why should the parents cast 


OF CHILDREN. 373 

away their privilege, and count their child an alien still 
from God’s mercies ? 

Again, you are not to teach your children that they 
need, of course, to be regenerated, because they fail in 
obedience, show bad tempers, and display manifold 
other faults. Have you no faults yourselves ? Do you 
then spring it as a conclusion against yourselves, that 
you are unregenerate persons, or do you take hold of 
God’s help, with new earnestness and confidence, that 
you may get strength to overcome your faults and be 
clear of them? Shortcomings, faults, casual disincli¬ 
nations of feeling,- are bad signs, such as ought to wa¬ 
ken distrust, but they are not, of course, conclusive 
evidences. 

As little are you to teach them that they are certainly 
unregenerate, or without piety, because they are light 
in many of their demonstrations, full of play, abound¬ 
ing in frolicsome gayeties. Which is worse and farthest 
from God, these innocent exuberances of life, or the 
covetous, overcaring, overworking, enviously plotting, 
sobriety of their parents ? 

Again you are never to teach your very young chil¬ 
dren that they are too young to be good, or to be really 
Christian. Never allow them to see that you expect 
them to be pious only at some future day, when they 
are older. What you despair of, or assume to be no 
possibility for them, they certainly will not attempt, and 
the discouragement of good, thus thrown upon them, 
may be even fatal to their future character. Draw them 
rather into your own exercises, taking always for grant- 
32 


374 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 

ed, that they will be with you. Promise them a com¬ 
mon part with you in God’s friendship, and as your lovo 
to God makes you good to them, careful of them, tender 
toward them, show them how it will make them good 
to one another and to you, and all good and happy 
together. 

Again, do not teach them that they can never pray, 
or do any thing acceptable to God, till after they 
are converted or regenerated. This, with many, is 
a great point of orthodoxy, and I would not speak 
of it with severity, because it is a very natural mistake; 
and yet it is one of the most hurtful delusions, short 
of real infidelity, that can be put into language. It 
is not only not true for children, but it is not true 
for any body, and is, in fact, a kind of barricade 
before the heavenly gate for every body, still out¬ 
side. It is very true that no one can pray, or do 
any thing acceptably, to God, as being and remaining 
unconverted, unregenerated; but that is a very different 
thing from showing that no one can pray, or do any¬ 
thing acceptably till after they are converted, or regen¬ 
erated. The difference is just as wide as between all 
good possibility and none whatever. God is ready to 
hear every child’s prayer, every man’s prayer, calls 
him to come and be heard for all he wants, only let him 
pray as coming to be converted, or born of the Spirit, 
in his prayer. If the prayers of the wicked are an 
abomination, as they certainly are, let them come to 
cease being wicked, and be made right with God. Can 
not a wicked man become right, and at what time and 



OF CHILDREN. 


375 


where, better than when God is hearing and helping his 
prayer? His very prayer will be a praying out of 
wickedness into right. But when he can not think, 
work, pray; can not do any thing acceptably, till after 
he is born of the Spirit, that word after fences him back, 
shuts him up in his sin, there to bide his time. What 
multitudes of children have been shut away from the 
kingdom of God, by this one misconception of piously 
intended orthodoxy. 

The mistake of teaching is scarcely less fatal, when 
the child is put to the doing of good works, and the 
making up of a character in the self-regulating way. 
That kind of duty is so legal and painful, and the poor 
child will be so often floored by his failures in it, that 
he will not continue long. A kind of despair will 
come upon him in a short time, and religion itself will 
take on a hard impossible look, that is even repulsive. 
Nothing will draw the child onward in ways of piety, 
but the sense of forgivenesses, helps, felt sympathies of 
grace and love. Salvation by faith, is the only kind of 
religion that a child can support. If there is no ladder 
to heaven but a ladder of will-works and observances, 
he will not be climbing it long. Where Luther fell off 
and lay groaning, infant steps will not persist. 

It is a great mistake, too, and a great Christian wrong, 
under salvation by faith, to be always showing children 
what a hard, dry service the Christian life must be. 
A great many parents do this unthinkingly, because it 
is just so to them. Where there is a real living faith, 
and children believe most easily, cheerfulness, bright- 


376 


THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 


ness, liberty, joy, are tbe element of life itself. But if 
the parent is down in the lowest grades of possible 
devotion, worried and not blessed by his piety, galled 
and not comforted; if the children hear him mourning 
always in his prayer, and confessing shortcomings and 
defeats and poverty enough to ungospel all the gospel 
promises, it should not be wonderful that they are not 
particularly drawn to that kind of piety. 

These, now, are some of the things which are not to 
be taught, but carefully avoided in the training of chil¬ 
dren. There are a great many other things which are 
not to be taught, for the reason that they can not be 
sufficiently apprehended, and will only confound the 
understanding instead of giving it light. These are to 
be taught, not formally or theologically, but implicitly, 
in a kind of child’s version, which the confessions com¬ 
monly do not give. Thus depravity in Adam, the 
fall of the race, the atonement by Christ in any view 
that makes it a ground of forgiveness, regeneration 
itself as a metaphysically defined change in character— 
none of these can be taught as a doctrine for young 
children. And yet they can all be taught implicitly. 
Thus we may represent to children that we are all sin¬ 
ners, and that God is displeased with us whenever we 
do or think what is wrong; that we want a better and 
a clean heart, so that we shall love to do what is right, 
and that Christ came down into the world to give it to 
us; that when we feel sorry for wrong he loves to for¬ 
give us, and that when we feel weak and are much 


OF CHILDREN. 


377 


tempted lie will help us, hearing our prayer, and com, 
ing to us by his Spirit, to give us strength. Meantime 
we must not omit teaching that Jesus had a most dear 
love to children, took them in his arms, blessed them, 
loved them even the more tenderly because of the bad 
world into which they are come; and that breathing 
his own love into them, he was able to say that of such 
is the kingdom of heaven. Proceeding in this manner, 
let the call be to the child to become good, and to be 
always trusting Christ to make him so, and he will 
get the force, implicitly, of a whole gospel, in this 
very simple and summary version. 

While the whole teaching centers at this point, the 
mind of the child will not be wearied, of course, by a 
continual reiteration of the same very simple matter, 
but it will be led about, into free ranges and excur¬ 
sions, among the facts and very dramatic incidents of 
the Scripture history. Little debates will be raised 
about duties in common matters; characters will be 
held up for approbation, or to be condemned. The 
matters of creation, from the sky downward, will come 
into notice, and be used to show God’s wisdom and 
greatness. And so there will be a rotary movement 
of inquiry and teaching, all round the great central 
point of being good, and the readiness of Christ to help 
us in it. 

Due care will be taken also not to thrust religious 
subjects on the child, when he is excited by other 
things, in a manner to make it unwelcome. His times 
of thought and appetite must be watched. Play with 
32 * 


378 


THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 


him when he wants to play, teach him when he wants 
to be taught. Untimely intrusions of religion will 
only make it odious—the child can not be crammed 
with doctrine. 

Children often break upon their parents with very 
tough questions, and questions that wear a consider¬ 
able looking towards infidelity. It requires, in fact, but 
a simple child to ask questions that no philosopher can 
answer. Parents are not to be hurried or flurried in 
such cases, and make up extempore answers that are 
only meant to confuse the child, and consciously have 
no real verity. It is equally bad, if the child is scolded 
for his freedom; for what respect can he have for the 
truth, when he may not so much as question where it 
is ? Still worse, if the child’s question is taken for an 
evidence of his superlative smartness, and repeated 
with evident pride in his hearing. In all such cases, a 
quiet answer should be given to the child’s question 
where it can easily be done, and where it can not, some 
delay should be taken; wherein it will be confessed 
that not even his parents know every thing. Or, some¬ 
times, if the question is one that plainly can not be 
answered by any body, occasion should be taken to 
show the child how little we know, and how many 
things God knows which are too deep for us—how rev¬ 
erently, therefore, we are to submit our mind to his, and 
let him teach us when he will, what is true. It is a very 
great thing for a child, to have had the busy infidel lurk¬ 
ing in his questions, early instructed in regard to the 
necessary limits of knowledge, and accustomed to a 


OF CHILDKEN. 379 

simple faith in God’s requirement, where his knowl¬ 
edge fails. 

Observe also, at just this point, the immense advant¬ 
age that a Christian parent has in Jesus Christ, as re¬ 
gards the religious teaching of his children. I speak 
here of the fact that all truth finds in him the concrete 
form. Truth' is not less really incarnate in him, than 
God. Indeed he testifies, himself, that he is the truth. 
And he is so, not merely in the sense that he parabolizes 
the truth, and gets it thus into human conditions or 
analogies, but that his own person also and life are the 
eternal form of truth; that he lives it, acts it forth, 
groans it in his Gethsemane, sheds it from his veins in 
the bleeding of his cross. You may take your chil¬ 
dren along therefore, through his childhood, into 
his ministries of healing, on to his death-scene itself, 
and it will be as if you led them through a gallery, 
where all divinest, most life-giving truth is pictured. 
No abstractions will be wanted, no difficult reaches of 
comprehension required; you have nothing to do but 
to show them Jesus as he is, and the Great Teach¬ 
ing will be in them—all that is needed as the vital 
bread of their intelligence, and heart, and character. 
The blessed child’s doctrine of the world is Christ. 
Have it then as your privilege to be always unfolding 
your child’s understanding, and spiritual nature, by 
that which will be life and healing to both; even Jesus 
Christ, the Word of the Father’s glory. Converse 
much of him and about him, make him familiar, and 
it will be strange if you do not find that both your 


380 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 

conversation and theirs is in heaven, where he sitteth 
at the right hand of God. 

And of this yon will be the more certain if you 
teach Christ not by words only, but by so living as to 
make your own life the interpreter of his. There is 
no feebler and more unpractical conception, than that 
children are faithfully taught, when they are abund¬ 
antly lectured. If you will put in Christ, you must 
put him on. There is no such gospel for them, as that 
which flavors your own conduct, and fills your personal 
atmosphere with the Christly aroma. 

At the same time it should be the constant endeavor 
with children, to make the subject of religion an open 
subject, and keep it so, never to be otherwise. Nothing 
is widei of dignity, or more mischievous in its effects, 
than the remarkable shyness of religious conversation 
in most Christian families. It argues either some great 
neglect of the parents, in which they have let the sub¬ 
ject fall out of range as a subject not to be named, or 
else it shows that, in trying to make it an open subject, 
so much of cant or untimely exhortation has been 
mixed with it, as to make it unwelcome. Rightly con¬ 
ceived, there is no subject of so great interest and such 
inexhaustible freshness, as that which pertains to the 
soul and the future life. Good conversation, too, upon 
it, in the house, is better than sermons. Why then 
should a Christian family, where every other subject 
is welcome, taboo this, requiring it to pass in silence, 
as if it were in fact the forbidden fruit of their intel¬ 
ligence ? 


OF CHILDREN. 


381 


But I must speak, in closing, of what appears to bo 
a somewhat general misconception, as respects the aim 
of Christian teaching in the case of very young chil¬ 
dren. According to the view I am here maintaining, 
it is not their conversion, in the sense commonly given 
to that term. That is a notion which belongs to the 
scheme that makes nothing of baptism and the organic 
unity of the house; that looks upon the children as 
being heathens, or aliens, requiring, of course, to be con¬ 
verted. But according to the scheme here presented, 
they are not heathens, or aliens; but they are in and 
of the household of faith, and their growing up is to be 
in the same. Parents therefore, in the religious teach¬ 
ing of their children, are not to have it as a point of 
fidelity to press them into some crisis of high experi¬ 
ence, called conversion. Their teaching is to be that 
which feeds a growth, not that which stirs a revolution. 
It is to be nurture, presuming on a grace already and 
always given, and, for just that reason, jealously care¬ 
ful to raise no thought of some high climax to be 
passed. For precisely here is the special advantage of 
a true sacramental nurture in the promise, that it does 
not put the child on passing a crisis, where he is thrown 
out of balance not unlikely, and becomes artificially 
conscious of himself, but it leaves him to be always in¬ 
creasing his faith, and reaching forward, in the sim¬ 
plest and most dutiful manner, to become what God is 
helping him to be. On this point Dr. Tiersch says, 
with very great insight, both of the gospel and of 
children— 


382 


THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 


“ It is certainly not difficult to bring a child into a 
condition of emotion and anxiety, by representations of 
natural corruption, of the judgment, and of the influ¬ 
ence of the enemy; and to fill him with doubts of his 
own salvation, thereby moving him to any thing that 
may be desired. It is possible that by these means, 
deep experiences of the communion of the soul have 
been brought to light. But these are consequences that 
should rather be objects of our fear than of our rejoic¬ 
ing. For here comes in the worst of all dangers, the 
early wasting of such impressions and experiences, and 
a creeping in of untruth, whilst the power vanishes and 
the forms of speech remain. For both the most deli¬ 
cate and the most solemn experiences become, after this 
method, objects of continual reflection and conversation, 
under which, at last, solemn earnestness, as well as all 
delicacy, is destroyed, and there remains either a con¬ 
tinual self-deception, with the semblance of the reality 
of godliness, or a gnawing consciousness of an increas¬ 
ing untruthfulness, and of an inner unfruitfulness be¬ 
neath a mass of phrases.”* 

It is a delicate matter for children to navigate in this 
rough sea of conversional tossings, where the stormy 
wind lifteth up the waves, and they go up to the 
heaven, and go down again to the depth, and their soul 
is melted because of trouble. There is, for the little 
ones, a more quiet way of induction. Show them how 
to be good, and then, when they fail, how God will 
help them if they ask him and trust in him for help. 


* Christian Family, p. 133. 



OP CHILDREN. 


383 


In this manner they will be passing little conversion- 
like crises all the time. Rejoice with them and for them 
as they do, only do not put them on the consciousness, 
in themselves, of what you seem to see. Let them be 
accustomed to it as a fact of experience that they are 
happy when they are right, and are right when God 
helps them to be, and that he always helps them to be 
when they put their trust in him. The Spirit of God is 
nowhere so dovelike as he is in his gentle visitations 
and hoverings of mercy over little children. 

What is wanted is, to train them by a corresponding 
gentleness, and keep them in the molds of the Spirit. 
JSTo spiritual tornado is wanted that will finish up the 
parental duties in a day; but there is to be a most ten¬ 
der and wise attention, watching always for them, and, 
at every turn or stage of advance, contributing what is 
wanted; enjoying their bright and happy times of good¬ 
ness and peace with them, helping their weak times, 
drawing them out of their discouragements, and smooth¬ 
ing away their moods of recoil and bitterness; contriv¬ 
ing always to supply the kind of power that is wanted, 
at the time when it is wanted. Yery young children 
religiously educated, it will be remembered by almost 
every grown up person, have many times of great relig¬ 
ious tenderness, when they are drawn apart in thought¬ 
fulness and prayer. The effort should be to make these 
little, silent pentecosts and gentle openings God-ward 
sealing-times of the Spirit, and have the family always 
in such keeping, as to be a congenial element for such 
times; and to suffer no possible hindrance, or opposing 


384 


THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING. 


influence, even should they come and go unobserved. 
Under such kind of keeping and teaching, God, who is 
faithful to all his opportunities, as men are not, will be 
putting his laws into the mind and writing them in the 
heart, and the prophet’s idea will be fulfilled to the let¬ 
ter ; it will not be necessary to go calling the children 
to Christ, and saying, know the Lord; for they will 
know him, every one, the least as the greatest, and the 
greatest as the least, each by a knowledge proper to 
his age. 


VIII 

FAMILY PRAYERS. 

“ ^ it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I 
will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall 
hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel.”— 
Hosta 11 . 21-2. 

By this very elaborate and poetically ingenious fig¬ 
ure, the prophet appears to be giving a contrived 
representation of the fiict, that when God brings in the 
promised day of his universal reign in the earth, there 
will be a grand convergency of causes to prepare it, 
and, like so many concurrent prayers, to make common 
suit for it before Him. Thus he figures the world as 
being the beautiful valley called Jezreel, which is the 
garden, so to speak, of the land. And it is to be as when ^ 
the people of Jezreel get their harvest, by having every 
thing in a train of concurrent agency to prepare it— 
they make petition by their careful tillage to the corn, 
the grapes, and olives, that they will grow apace; these, 
in turn, make suit to the earth to give them nutriment; 
this again hears them, and lifts its petition to the 
heavens, asking rain and dew; whereupon, last of all, 
the heavens hand up the prayers to God, to furnish 
them water, and let them shed it down; which petition 
he graciously hears, and the harvest follows. So he 
conceives it will be, as the harvest of the world 
33 


386 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


approaches. It will be as if all things were put striv¬ 
ing together, and a prayer were going up for it through 
all the concurrent circles of Providence. God’s counsel 
and kingdom are constructing always a perfect har¬ 
mony, by their convergence on his perfect end. Then, 
as the perfect end is neared, and the harmony with it 
grows more complete, it will be as if more things were 
concurring in it and asking for it, and prayer, falling in 
as a cause among causes, will have them all praying 
with it, or handing up its request. In which we may 
see what holds good of all prayer, and how or by what 
law it prevails. In one view, the whole future is 
prayed in by the whole present, being such a future as 
the whole present demands. The more things, there¬ 
fore, prayer can get into harmony with itself in its 
request, the more likely it is to prevail; and the more 
alone it is, and the more things it has opposite to it, in 
the field of causes, the less likely it is to prevail—even 
as Adam had less hope of success in praying for Cain, 
that the blood of Abel was crying to God against him 
from the ground. 

All prayer being under this general condition, family 
prayer will be of course; and of this I now propose to 
speak. I choose to handle the subject in this form, in 
the conviction that the prayers of families are so often 
defeated by the want of any such concert in the aims, 
plans, tempers, works, and aspirations of the house, as 
are necessary to a common suit before God; in other 
words, because the prayers, commonly so called, are de¬ 
feated by the suit of so many causes contrary to them. 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


387 


We sometimes use the terms family worship and fam¬ 
ily prayers, without any reference at all to their spiritual 
acceptance with God, or to any gifts and benefits to be 
bestowed, in the way of answer to such prayers. We 
speak of the worship, or the prayers, as a kind of morn¬ 
ing observance; a religious formality that is to have its 
value, under the laws of drill and habitual repetition; 
good therefore, in that sense, to be kept a going, and 
not expected to be good on the high ground of faith and 
living intercourse with God. That it is to be the open¬ 
ing of heaven and the keeping of it open to the family, 
under the conditions of prevailing prayer, is either not 
commonly supposed, or not made a point of practical 
endeavor. The benefits thought of are to be such as 
will come of mere observance itself, and the religious 
reverence impressed by it. 

Now that some such kind of benefit may be expected 
to follow, I am not about to question. Any such ex¬ 
ternal observance, kept up in the family, must probably 
beget a deeper sense of religion, and prepare all the 
members to a readier admission of the great principles 
of faith, and spiritual devotion to God. And in that 
view, the observance of family worship is a matter of 
such consequence in a family, that the parent, who con¬ 
fessedly is not a Christian person, ought still to feel it 
incumbent on him to maintain that observance. And 
if such were the persons with whom I am dealing in 
this discussion, I should urge it upon them, as a matter 
indispensable, and never to be omitted. But my sub¬ 
ject is different. I am addressing Christian parents, on 


388 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


the subject of the Christian training of their children; 
showing it to be the same thing as a training into 
Christ, and how that training will secure the real initia 
tion of their children into a state of genuine discipleship. 
Having this aim therefore, I shall drop out of notice 
family worship as observance, and speak of it only as 
the open state of prayer and communion with God in 
the house. For, as the greater includes the less, we 
need not be careful about the less; but only about the 
greater. And I shall speak, in the conviction that a 
great and principal reason why the family religion of 
those who are really Christian believers, carries no sav¬ 
ing benefit with it, is that they are content with the 
less when they ought to claim the greater; maintaining 
the family prayers, in the way of observance only, and 
not as an appeal of faith to God. They imagine some 
impossibility perhaps of maintaining the family religion 
on so high a key. It will not only be a wearisome and 
over-exhaustive painstaking for themselves, but they 
sometimes imagine that the children, too, will be finally 
drugged by such over-dosing, in the spiritual intensities 
of religion, and be only the more repelled from it. 

But they greatly mistake, in this kind of judgment, 
by mistaking first, in their conception of what is neces¬ 
sary to the prevalent effect of the family prayers, and 
the always open state of the house towards God. No 
rhapsodies are wanted, or flights of feeling, or heavings 
of passional intercession, as many are wont to assume, 
but simply that there should be a sober, calculated har¬ 
mony between all the plans and appointments of life, 


FAMILY PEAYERS. 


389 


and the prayers or petitions made. The great difficulty 
in faith, after all, is to be faithful. God is not carried 
by shrieks of emotion, but by the honestly meant and 
soberly contrived ordering of things, to make them 
work in with, and, if possible, work out the prayers. 
In this view, let me call your attention— 

I. To the manner in which prayers, of all kinds, get 
their answer from God. Two things are wanted, as 
conditions previous to the favoring answer. First, that 
the matter requested should agree with God’s beneficent 
aims, or the ends of good to which his plans are built. 
Secondly, that the prayer should agree with as many 
other prayers, and as many other circles of causes as 
possible; for God is working always toward the largest 
harmony, and will not favor, therefore, the prayers of 
words, when every thing else in the life is demanding 
something else, but will rather have respect to what has 
the widest reach of things and persons making suit with 
it. It is at this latter point that prayers most commonly 
fail, viz: that they are solitary and contrary, having 
nothing put in agreement with them; as if some one 
person should be praying for fair weather when every 
body else wants rain, and the gaping earth, and thirsty 
animals, and withering trees, are all asking for it to¬ 
gether. Or a man, we may conceive, prays for holi¬ 
ness, getting off his knees to go and defraud his neigh¬ 
bor ; or that he may be prospered in some plan that re¬ 
quires industry, and, by indolence and inattention, 
leaves all the causes of nature making suit against him 
33 * 


390 FAMILY PRAYERS. 

God is for some largest harmony in the hearing of pray¬ 
ers, as in every thing else. All the prayers that he will 
hear too must, in some sense, be from Himself, which 
is the same as to say that they must chime with His 
ends, and the working of his plans generally. 

See how it is, for example, in the great realm of nature. 
The first thing here to be discovered is that every thing 
requires every thing; or, if we take the figure of prayer, 
that all events make suit for all. Omit any one, and there 
would be a shock of discord felt in the whole frame¬ 
work. As regards the interior principle of causes, we 
know nothing; we only see them all playing into all, 
and all demanding all, and then, all together, making 
suit for a certain general future, somehow accordant 
with them and their harmonies. Thus it will be seen 
to hold, even scientifically, in the grand astronomic sys¬ 
tem of worlds, that all the innumerable parts have a 
perfect concurrence, demanding exactly every thing 
that comes to pass, in the motions, changes of position, 
perturbations of parts, and processions of the whole. 
The principle, every thing for every thing and all to¬ 
gether one, is so exact, that every atom and tiniest 
insect feels the touch, in fact, of every heaviest, high¬ 
est, and remotest orb, and every such orb a respective¬ 
ness of action reaching downward, after every such 
minim of matter and life. 

Such is nature, and it would be exactly so, were it 
not for sin, in the supernatural order, viz: in the 
wants, and works, and prayers, and heavenly gifts of 
God’s spiritual empire. Sin harmonizes with nothing. 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


891 


It is a principle of general discord witli all God’s pur¬ 
poses, plans, and creations; refusing to be included in 
any terms of intellectual unity and order. But God is 
none the less intent on harmony here, that the constitu¬ 
ent harmony of his realm is broken. All that He is 
doing as a world’s Redeemer, is to gather together in 
one, all the loosened elements of discord, and settle the 
world again, in everlasting concord and unity. And 
toward this final issue he puts all things working to¬ 
gether as for the same good issue. 

Thus it will be found that the Bible history shows 
a grand convergency of all the matters included in it, 
and that a mysterious concert weaves all its facts to¬ 
gether, and keeps them working toward the same 
result. The ritual of Moses, and the forty years’ march, 
and all the captivities and dispersions of the people, and 
the dispersions of the Greek and Roman languages, and 
all the philosophic exhaustions, and all the crumblings 
of the false religions, and all the great wars of the Ro¬ 
mans, and all the fortunes of empire determined by 
those wars, and then the universal pacification of the 
world—by all these vast concurrences the world is made 
ready, and set waiting for Christ to be born. The stu¬ 
dents of history, looking over this field, are astonished 
by the vastness of the preparation, and it is to them, as 
if they heard all these world-wide powers voiced in 
prayer together for the coming of Jesus. Just here, 
then was the time for him to come. And thus, in fact, 
he came, in the exact fullness of time, when the largest 
harmony was asking for him. 


392 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


In the same way, it will be seen, descending to a 
lower field, that every conversion to God takes place 
when some largest harmony demands it. Not always, 
or commonly, when some friend, or wife, or good mother, 
prays it, wholly alone, but when others join them, or 
when, at least, there is a large concurrence of provi¬ 
dences and causes, making the same suit, and joining 
in the general conspiracy of reasons. And so much is 
there in this, that the subject himself will almost always 
feel a conviction of some wonderful conjunction of 
means, and conditions, and prayers, just then brought 
together, to accomplish the otherwise difficult or impos¬ 
sible result. 

Other illustrations, without limit, could be cited from 
the processes of God’s spiritual administration; for it is 
always working toward the largest harmony. But we 
come directly to the matter of prayer itself And here 
we meet the promise, first of all, that—“if we ask any 
thing according to his will he heareth us;” for the de¬ 
sign is here to draw the petitioner into the most inti¬ 
mate acquaintance, and bring him into the most exact 
conformity with, God’s purposes and ends. And prob¬ 
ably the whole economy of prayer, or giving gifts to 
prayer, which might as well be given otherwise with¬ 
out prayer, is to affect this radical agreement of the 
petitioners with God. Next we have that peculiar 
phrasing of the doctrine of prayer, by Christ, when he 
says—“If two of you shall agree, on earth, as teaching 
any thing, that they shall ask, it shall be done for 
themwhere the intent of the doctrine is to bring the 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


893 


petitioners into the largest possible circle of harmony 
among themselves. Hence the promise too—“Ye shall 
seek me and find me, if ye search for me with all your 
heart;” where the-purpose is to bring each individual 
into the largest harmony with himself, and not leave 
half his dispositions, or aspirations, or lustings, praying 
virtually against his prayers. Hence, again the com¬ 
mand—“Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptations 
where the endeavor is to set the voluntary powers 
chiming with the prayers, and working toward a grand 
petitional harmony with them. By the whole economy 
of prayer, then, God is working toward the largest, 
most inclusive harmony, and prayer is to be successful, 
just according to the amount of concurrency there is in 
it. First, there is to be the completest possible concur¬ 
rency with God; then a concurrency of one or two 
hundred, or, if so it may be, two hundred millions of 
petitioners in a common suit; and then all these are to 
be total in the suit, bringing all their lustings, affections, 
works, plans, properties, and self-sacrifices, into the pe¬ 
tition ; whereupon the prayer will grow strong, just in 
proportion to the amount of agreement, or concurrence 
there is in it. 

Under this great law, therefore, prayer, as a matter of 
fact, has been getting and will always be getting more 
strength by the larger harmonies it embodies. Noah 
prayed alone for his very ungodly times, and could not 
be heard—the blood of Abel was crying to God for jus¬ 
tice over against him, and so were all the crimes of vio¬ 
lence and murder in his own most bloody and cruel 


394 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


age. Abraham prayed for Sodom, but there were no 
fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, or, as far as we know, 
more than one righteous man to pray with him; and 
therefore he fails, obtaining only the safety of that 
Godly brother’s family. Afterwards Daniel, in a mat¬ 
ter of great peril, was able, going to his house to pray, 
to set his three friends praying with him, and he found 
the light on which even his life depended. Still farther 
on, Esther set all her countrymen in the city praying 
and fasting with her, and obtained, in that manner, the 
deliverance of her whole people, and their promotion to 
honor in the kingdom. And so, again, the more won¬ 
derful scene of power which inaugurates the church, on 
the day of Pentecost, is distinguished by this principal, 
all-determining fact, that the disciples are all with one 
accord in one place, praying for the heavenly gift. 

Not to extend these illustrations farther, We may 
safely put it down as a conclusion, that prayer wants 
the largest possible harmony praying with it; or what 
is the same, as many reasons, and causes, and wants, 
and conditions, and persons, as possible, chiming in the 
suit of it; so that God may answer it for harmony’s 
sake, and not against harmony. It may seem that I 
have led you a long way to reach this conclusion, espe¬ 
cially when my subject is family prayer. But we shall 
now be able— 

II. To dispatch that particular subject as much more 
briefly; and besides, I have been able to hit upon no 
other method, which promised to unfold the real condi- 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


395 


tions of family prayer, and show the reasons of utter 
failure and abortiveness in it so distinctly and im¬ 
pressively. 

The great infirmity of family prayers, or of what i3 
sometimes called family religion, is that it stands alone 
in the house, and has nothing put in agreement with it. 
Whereas, if it is to have any honest reality, as many 
things as possible should be soberly and deliberately 
put in agreement with it; for indeed it is a first point 
of religion itself, that by its very nature, it rules pre- 
sidingly over every thing desired, done, thought, plan¬ 
ned for, and prayed for, in the life. It is never to finish 
itself up by words, or word-supplications, or even by 
sacraments; but the whole custom of life and character 
must be in it and of it, by a total consent of the man. 
And more depends on this, a hundred times, than upon 
any occasional fervors, or passional flights, or agoniz- 
ings. The grand defect will, in almost all cases, be, in 
what is more deliberate, viz: in the want of any 
downright, honest, casting of the family in the type of 
religion, as if that were truly accepted as the first 
thing. 

See just what is wanted, by what is so very com¬ 
monly not found. First of all, the mere observance 
kind of piety, that which prays in the family to keep 
up a reverent show, or acknowledgment of religion, is 
not enough. It leaves every thing else in the life to be 
an open space for covetousness, and all the gay lust- 
ings of worldly vanity. It even leaves out prayer; for 
the saying prayers is, in no sense, really the same thing 


896 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


as to pray. Contrary to this, there should be some real 
prayer, prayer for the meaning’s sake, and not for the 
shell of religious decency in which the semblance may 
be kept. This latter kind looks, indeed, for no return 
of blessing from God, but only for a certain religious 
effect accomplished by the drill of repetitional observ¬ 
ance. There is also another kind of drill sometimes 
attempted in the prayers of families, which is much 
worse, viz: when the prayer is made, every morning, 
to hit this or that child in some matter of disobedience, 
or some mere peccadillo into which he has fallen. 
Nothing can be more irreverent to God than to make 
the hour of prayer a time of prison-discipline for the 
subjects of it, and nothing could more certainly set 
them in a fixed aversion to religion and to every thing 
sacred. This kind of prayer prays, in fact, for ex¬ 
asperation’s sake, and the effect will correspond. 

In the next place, what is prayed for in the house by 
the father, is, how commonly, not prayed for by the 
mother in her family tastes and tempers, and is even 
prayed against, in fact, by all the instigations of appear¬ 
ance, and pride, and show, which are raised by her 
motherly studies and cares. And this, too, not seldom, 
when her prayers themselves are burdened with much 
feeling, and bear the appearances of much earnest long¬ 
ing for the piety of her children. Her prayers sound 
well in the wording, and she verily thinks that she 
means what she asks for; but the notions of standing 
she is putting in the head of her son, or the dress she 
is just now getting up for her daughter, pray, a hun- 


FAMILY PRAVERS. 


897 


dred fold harder than her prayers, only just the other 
way; calling in results of feeling and character that 
are selfish, worldly, earthly in the last degree. 

It is a matter of the greatest importance, too, as re¬ 
gards the successful training of children, that they 
should be inducted into ways and habits of prayer 
themselves, as very frequently they are not. Sometimes 
even Christian mothers, who pray much for their chil¬ 
dren, never lead them into the practice of prayer for 
themselves. They are kept from so doing, by the sup¬ 
posed orthodox belief, first, that their children are of 
course in the gall of bitterness, and secondly, that such 
can offer no prayer, which is not an abomination to the 
Lord; in both which conclusions they are, in fact, 
neither orthodox nor Christian, and what to the children, 
at least, is even worse than that, consent to let them 
grow up in no personal habit of religion. How then 
can they be reached by the prayers of the house, when 
they are deliberately put outside of the possibility, even 
of beginning to pray for themselves ? Sometimes they 
are taught to pray only in the sense of saying prayers, 
or repeating some little formula appropriate to their age. 
And there is nothing ill in this, if they only do it occa¬ 
sionally. But the much better method, in general, is 
for the mother to word a simple prayer for them herself, 
and let them follow after in the repetition of it, sentence 
by sentence. The prayer in this case, will have respect 
to the particular matters of the day; what has been 
seen, felt, enjoyed, wanted, suffered, and needs to be 
forgiven. Very soon the child himself, practiced in 
84 


398 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


this way, will begin to drop in a sentence, here or there, 
that comes directly out of his feeling, and it will not 
be long before he will be able to word a whole prayer 
for himself, and will so be led along into the habit of 
praying with his mother, and be grown, so to speak, 
into the ruling desires and prayers of the house. In 
this method, regularly pursued, the child may be trained 
to a perfectly open state in the matter of prayer; so 
that when the father is absent, or is taken away by 
death, he will be ready, at a very early period on his 
way to manhood, to take his father’s place. There will 
be nothing ghostly, or sanctimoniously separated from 
the common going on of life, in the way of prayer thus 
maintained. Having it for the element of childhood, 
and being grown into the practice of it, the very 
geniality, and sweetness, and good cheer of home, will 
seem to be lapped in it, and it will be so far natural, that, 
if it were taken away, the course of life itself would 
<?eem to be even painfully unnatural. A house without 
a roof, would scarcely be a more indifferent home than 
a family state unsheltered by God’s friendship, and the 
sense of being always rested in his Providential care and 
guidance. No sweetness of life is so indispensable to a 
family, brought up thus, in the open state with God, as 
to have all the cares, affections, partings, sicknesses, 
afflictions, prosperities, marriages, deaths, and all kinds 
of works, habitually blessed, by the sense of God ap¬ 
pealed to, and consciously witnessing in them. 

But this again, depends on yet another fact, where 
commonly the defect is manifold greater than it is in the 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


399 


points already referred to. It is not only necessary to 
tlie genuine state of family religion, or the open state of 
godly living in the house, that the. prayers should be 
prayers and not observances, and that both the parents 
should be truly in them together, and the children care¬ 
fully bred into them also as the common joy of their 
home; but it is necessary also that the practical ends, 
tastes, plans, aspirations, and works of the house, should 
all come into the same circle of concert, and join their 
petition to reinforce the suit of the prayers. And here, 
as I have already intimated, is the great cause of failure 
in family religion. It is not difficult to get a Christian 
father into such a strain of desire for his children, that 
he will faithfully maintain the prayers of the house, and 
press himself at times into great fervors in his suit for 
them. These fervors will, too often, be kindled, in fact, 
by the conviction of really great derelictions of duty, 
such as come between the family and all God’s blessings 
upon them. No, the difficult thing here is, not to get 
even the fervors of prayer, but to get the life itself and 
its works into that honest and deliberate agreement 
with the prayers, that will give them a genuine power 
and meaning, without any such flights and passional 
vehemences. The difficulty is that almost nothing, in 
the arrangements, tempers, and practical ends of the 
house, agrees with the prayers. The father prays in 
the morning that his children may grow up in the 
Lord, and calls it even the principal good of their life, 
that they are to be Christians, living to God and for the 
world to come. Then he goes out into the field, or the 


400 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


shop, or the house of trade, and delving there, all day, 
in his gains, keeps praying from morning to night, with¬ 
out knowing it, that his family may be rich. His plans 
and works, faithfully seconded by an affectionate wife, 
pull exactly contrary to the pull of his prayers, and to 
all their common teaching in religion. Their tempers 
are worldly, and make a worldly atmosphere in the 
house. Pride, the ambition of show and social stand¬ 
ing, envy to what is above, jealousy of what is below, 
follies of dress and fashion, and the more foolish elation 
felt when a son is praised, or a daughter admired in the 
matter of personal appearance, or what is no better, a 
manifest preparing and foretasting of this folly, when 
the son, or daughter, is so young as to be only the more 
certainly poisoned by the infection of it—0 these un¬ 
spoken, damning prayers! how many are they, and 
how totally do they fill up the days! The mornings 
open with a reverent, fervent-sounding prayer of words, 
and then the days come after piling up petitions of ends, 
aims, tempers, passions, and works, that ask for any 
thing and every thing, but what accords with the 
genuine rule of religion. The prayer of the morning 
is that the son, the daughter, all the sons, all the 
daughters, may be Christian; and then the prayers that 
follow are for any thing but that, or any thing, in fact, 
most contrary to that. Is it any wonder, when we 
consider this common disagreement between the pray¬ 
ers, even the fervent prayers of the family, and all the 
other concerns, enjoyments, and ends of the common 
life beside, that so many fine shows of family [ iety are 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 401 

yet followed, by so much of godless and even repro¬ 
bate character, in the children! 

Here then, my brethren, is the great lesson of family 
religion; it is that religion, being the supreme end and 
law of life, is to have every thing put in the largest 
possible harmony with it. And this is to be done by 
no superlative fervors, or heats of piety and prayer, 
but by the sober, honest, practical arrangement of life 
and its plans. Thus, if your children are to grow up 
into Christ, that is to be made their prayer, and the 
prayer of both the parents, and the prayer of all the 
buildings, migrations, plans, toils, trades, and pleasures 
of the house. All these are to pray, in sober earnest, 
that the children, as the practically best thing possible, 
and most to be desired, may be Christian in their life. 
There is no difficulty in forming a whole family to God, 
when there is grace enough in the parents to make 
that really the object, and set every thing in the largest 
harmony with it. The only difficulty is in doing it, 
when the prayers and the family religion are one side 
of every thing else, in a department by themselves, and 
the whole body of life’s practical works and ends is 
operating directly against the result desired and prayed 
for. Prayer, in a certain proper view of it, is only one 
of the great causes of the world, and all the causes, 
natural as well as supernatural, are, in a certain broad 
sense, prayers. What is wanted, therefore, is to put all 
the causes, all the prayers, into a common strain of en¬ 
deavor, reaching after a common good, in God and his 
friendship. The religious affinities of the house then 
34 * 


402 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


take the mold of the prayers, and become a kind of 
prayer themselves. The children grow into faith, as it 
were, by a process of natural induction—only it will be 
intensely supernatural, because their faith is both quick¬ 
ened and grown in the atmosphere of God’s own Spirit, 
always filling the house. He molds the prayers to 
agreement with God’s will, and the prayers of each to 
the prayers of all, and the works and plans and tastes 
of all to the prayers; and then, as a consequence, 
which is also an answer, fills the house with his in- 
grown sanctifying power, and seals the members with 
his seal of life. 

Let us stop here now, in our closing, and contem¬ 
plate the dignity and power of a genuine family relig¬ 
ion, thus maintained. Consistency and solid reality, 
we have seen, are its great distinction—the whole order¬ 
ing of the house is worshipful, and faithfully chimes 
with the prayers. The very table is sanctified with, as 
well as by, the blessing invoked upon it; so that when 
the house are feeding animal enjoyments, and, so far, 
saying that they are animals, they do not become such. 
Their sensuality is kept under by a divine spirituality 
above it. It is not so much their bodies as their souls 
that are fed. By their holy charities and prayers, the 
family property is also sanctified, and all the industries 
by which it is obtained. The training of the house 
does not end in money, the conversation is not about 
money, the plans are not plans turning on the supreme 
good of money, the only losses dreaded or shunned are 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


408 


not losses of money. Their thoughts and affections 
therefore, mellowed by the family piety, do not clink 
in their souls, as we sometimes almost hear them with 
a hard-money sound. For the love of God penetrates 
and savors, all through, even the works of thrift and 
all the ennobled virtues of a genuine economy. The 
mental life also is raised by the family religion, for they 
live thoughtfully, as in contact with God, and all the 
highest themes of existence. Events, providences, nay 
even things themselves, take on senses related to intel¬ 
ligence, feeling, and the uses of faith. And so their 
very talent grows into volume, because it is never im¬ 
prisoned, or stunted by the external measures of things; 
but is led forth, always, into what things signify, as 
related to the broader affinities and the half-poetic life 
of religion. They are refined, in this manner, without 
any ambition to copy the mannerisms of refinement; 
refined by the fining of their intelligence and feeling. 
They are not emasculated by their culture, but grow 
manlier in it; because of the good and great thoughts, 
and high subjects, into which they are trained by the 
sober, honest piety of their practice. 

The family is thus exalted, every way, by the family 
religion; because there is such reality and all-diffusive 
harmony in the scope of it. In the prayers of the day 
it recalls, in one way or another and with filial reverence, 
the ancestors that have gone before, and looks hopefully 
on to the great reunion of the future. Its births are so 
many arrivals, or presentations, at the gate of eternity; 
its baptisms and baptismal namings are titles recorded in 


404 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


the family register of God; its deaths are only the mi- 
grations of so many into life, to be followed by the mi¬ 
gration of all; and the sense of a good future, to be 
their common heritage, imparts a trustful, quietly cheer¬ 
ful air to their waiting. For that bright gathering of 
the house, after the storms-are over, gilds their adversi¬ 
ties and sicknesses, and kindles a beautiful expectancy 
in their prayers—keeps them looking up and away, with¬ 
out any instigations of asceticism, or false antipathy to 
the world. The godly father dwells in such a house, 
even as the apostle pictures Abraham, dwelling in tab¬ 
ernacles with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the 
same promise viz: that of a city that hath foundations. 
Heirs with him—not heirs of his fee-simple, not legatees 
in his will, waiting patiently or impatiently for him to 
die, but heirs with him of a great angelic future that 
rests in character and fruits of well doing, in which 
they bless, and by mankind as well as God, are blessed. 

What scene of family dignity is more to be admired ? 
The highest splendors of wealth and show, have but a 
feeble glow-worm look in the comparison—a pale, faint 
glimmer of light, a phosphorescent halo, enveloping 
what is only a worm.’ Even the poor laboring man, 
thanking God, at his table, for the food he earned by 
the toil of yesterday, singing still, each morning, in his 
family hymn, of the glorious rest at hand, moving on 
thitherward with his children, by single day’s journeys 
of prayer and praise, teaching them, even as the eagles 
do their young, to spread their wings with him and 
Hse—this man, I say, is the prince of God in his house, 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 405 

and the poor garb, in which he kneels, outshines the 
robes of palaces. 

The beauty of such family scenes has not escaped the 
notice of poetry itself, or even of mere worldly observa¬ 
tion. But we must not, for a moment, forget that the 
charm of all such family pictures depends on that sound 
reality of worship, which puts every thing in the house 
in keeping with the prayers, and carries back the mean¬ 
ing of the prayers into every thing in the house. A 
flourish of prayer in the morning, followed by all flour- 
ishings of vanity and prosperous selfishness, for the 
rest of the day, will not answer. We look in upon the 
Christian family, where every thing is on a footing of 
religion, and we see them around their own quiet hearth 
and table, away from the great public world and its 
strifes, with a priest of their own to lead them. They 
are knit together in ties of love that make them one; 
even as they are fed and clothed out of the same fund, 
interested in the same possessions, partakers in the same 
successes and losses, suffering together in the same sor¬ 
rows, animated each by hopes that respect the future 
benefit of all. Into such a circle and scene it is that 
religion comes, each day, to obtain a grace of well-do¬ 
ing for the day. And it comes not by itself, as in the 
public assembly, not in a manner that is one side of life 
and its common affairs. There is no pretense, no show, 
no toilet practice going before, no reference of thought 
to fashion, or dress, or appearance. It leads in the day, 
as the dawn leads in the morning. It blends a heav¬ 
enly gratitude with the joys of the table; it breathes a 


406 


FAMILY PRAYERS 


cheerful sense of God into all the works and tempers 
of the house; it softens the pillow for rest when the day 
is done. And so the religion of the house is life itself, 
the life of life; and having always been observed, it 
becomes an integral part even of existence, leaving no 
feeling that, in a proper family it could ever have been 
otherwise. A family state, maintained without a fire, 
would not seem to be more impossible or colder. Home 
and religion are kindred words; names both of love and 
reverence; home, because it is the seat of religion; re¬ 
ligion, because it is the sacred element of home. 

This training, in short, of a genuine, practically all- 
embracing, all-imbuing family religion, makes the fami¬ 
lies so many little churches, only they are as much bet¬ 
ter, in many points, as they are more private, closer to 
the life of infancy, and more completely blended with 
the common affairs of life. Here it is that chastity, 
modesty, temperance, industry, truth—all the virtues 
that give beauty, and worth, and majesty, to character, 
get their root. Here it is, above all, that they who 
are born into life, are led up, in their gracious training, to 
knit the green tendrils of existence to God. And so, in 
all the future scenes of duty, and wrong, and grief 
through which they are to pass, it will be found that 
they were furnished here, with supplies of grace, and 
armed with shields of confidence from God, to meet 
every encounter, bear every burden, and maintain every 
kind of well doing, till the victory of life is won. 

Holding, now, this conviction, as Christian parents, 
of the importance of a true family religion, allow your- 


FAMILY PRAYERS. 


407 


selves never to forget the condition which alone makes 
it of so great value, viz: that it has such scope as to 
include and harmonize all the ways, and works, and 
cares of the house. See that you plan to be, in your 
undertakings, just what you pray to be in your prayers. 
Set the general concert of your affairs in God’s own 
order, to accomplish only what is agreeable to his will, 
so to be always praying with you, and the prophet’s 
rich valley, teeming with all fruits of abundance and 
luxury, will but feebly represent the unfailing, never 
blighted, always fruitful, piety of your children. 







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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 















































